Life With Full Hands

Sick today :-(

2012-01-27T06:17:00.000-08:00

No Big Changes post today. Not feeling well, sinus infection. I went with a friend to get some fabric that was at her mom's house. The house was old, and I could tell there was mold there. Soon after I arrived I could feel my sinuses and ears reacting to the mold. And sure enough, a few days later I have a sinus infection. Bummer. I've started some immune tea and a goldenseal/echinacea tincture. So for today, there will be no thought provoking post :-) I will just leave you with a bunch of pictures I took yesterday.

Isabella was kind enough to go into the attic to find some shoes for Aubrey. He has been shoeless till now.

Trying to figure out how to walk in 'new' shoes.

Aubrey has taken to waving at the airplanes that fly over head!

Sometimes he needed a bit of help getting back up again. I am sure this was fall number 742, just from today.

When we walked to get the mail, he found it easier to hold a hand.

Little babes with shoes are so cute!

Jonah was itching to get some digging in. We will have to direct his digging efforts in the future, when we are ready to garden. Here he is digging up our driveway.

At least he's willing to help.

Isabella was very happy to have received a letter from a pen pal.

Isabella hard at work, studying.

She's been taking a LOT of notes on this subject.

Hard at thought.

What she's been studying... :-) Take note of the picture in the book.

Below I put a bunch of pictures of Jed and Aubrey playing. I am thinking that Jed had different intentions than Aubrey. But non the less they both were having fun. Note the amount of dirt *on* Aubrey.

After a quick brush off, Aubrey was having a blast being pushed around on the trike. It was time to 'pack up' and go inside.

Big Changes #3 **Church

2012-01-26T10:09:00.000-08:00

This has been one of the most contested of our changes, but not by us. We most certainly do not believe that people have to agree with us, but they don't have to be rude either. We've had people, who were lovingly concerned with our change, and some that were trying to shake a finger at us. I just want to reiterate, if you don't agree with us, that's totally fine, but just be nice about it in the comments :-) This was not a decision that was made lightly. This took a long time of mulling over, prayer and conversation before we made our final decision.

There are certainly many reasons we chose to attend this church in the first place. It would most certainly be too long to go into here. I will say that it was a bit of a swing in the opposite direction of where we were attending. That was a difficult time, trying to find out what were really our convictions. This last church had Sunday school, something we had not been in agreement with for many years. But we decided to give it a try. They also had a youth group. That was 'tried' with Dad in tow, to see what they did, and the teaching they were getting. It was decided that it was not beneficial. So our oldest just helped out in the nursery during that hour (her choice). The preaching was wonderful, and very Biblical. So there wasn't anything wrong with that. The church was varied in their convictions on non essentials. And, being non essentials, there was nothing wrong with that. The problem was, church is also a community, an extended family, and it was becoming clear that we were not being supported by our 'family'.

Any homeschooling parent will know what I am talking about when I say that homeschooling isn't the easy road! As such, it is hard to go it alone, although it can be done. There was only one other family, with older children, that were homeschooling. Any other homeschooled older children were sent to public school once they got to high school age. This left our oldest child the odd 'man' out. As was stated in the past two Changes posts, our family was on shaky ground. As such it was proving difficult for Isabella to fend off the peer pressure. Whether it was homeschooling, lack of cell phone, or the fact that she hadn't seen the latest movie, she was always the oddball. I witnessed first hand the ridicule that she received. At first we thought it was Isabella that had a problem with making friends. It is now evident that it wasn't her, but that no one wanted to be her friend because she wasn't "one of them". For that, I can be VERY thankful!!!! But it was still heart breaking that she felt alone in the world. Anyone who has read Michael Pearl's article, "Jumping Ship" will know that feeling can lead to jumping ship. And we really saw that happening! Granted, the bigger problem was that our ship wasn't something she wanted to stay on, but it didn't help to have the other influences around her.

So we began to consider what should be done. Our first focus, as it should be, was to change things in our family to make our ship more pleasant and livable. But during this time it would prove one step forward, two back if we kept dangling that carrot before her eyes. And a sinful carrot at that. The deciding factor? We happened to sit behind the youth group in service. Someone was taking over as the youth leader and decided to have the youth group sit through service. We came in late, and the only place to sit was behind them. There isn't any other way to say this...I was appalled. Plain and simple. And NO, my children are not perfect in the least, but the behavior I saw was totally unwarranted. And the whole while my daughters were taking this in.

The following week we decided to try another church that friends of ours attended that we knew to be a family integrated church (though they don't call themselves that). I was not able to attend because one of the boys was sick. I was a bit nervous since the girls were very upset about leaving our then current church. They came home and Jeremiah said that they loved it, especially Isabella. Now, do understand my children are not theologically minded, they base their decisions on how many playmates they have :-) But what a relief to hear Isabella tell me all about her time there. How everyone talked to her. It was very telling, that just on that one visit, she said, "It was wonderful to not feel like an oddball!"

People there are living most of our convictions. The great thing is that there is freedom there, but that is not taken out of context. Each family is following what they see the Scriptures speaking, and they want everyone there to live that freedom as well. Our children have other homeschoolers to hang around with. Modesty is upheld, but there are no rules as to girls must wear dresses only or anything like that. They are very big into families being a close unit, and as such do not schedule a lot of church activities.

There you have it. The simple reasons. Seemingly not so simple to all though. We've been told we are being selfish. Yes, really. We have been told we should stay to be a light to those around us. That does indeed sound Godly, but at what cost? We have been willing to be honest and assess our family's strengths and weaknesses. We are not strong enough to be that light. Not yet, anyway. It makes no sense to lose our children to the world to save others. What we feel would be the right thing? For those parents of those teens to be the light to their own children. We've been accused of being isolationists. We shouldn't be a part of a group that thinks like us. I would dare say that pretty much everyone does so, without thinking of it. We were just more mindful of it when making our decisions.

No church is perfect. Our family isn't perfect. We shouldn't choose a church on the sole basis of what can it do for me. We are to be servants. But that doesn't mean you throw your family's needs to the wind either. We are glad there are other families out there that can be a light to those around them. We pray we can be such a family one day. For now, we have entered the greenhouse to tend closely to our tender a battered plants. One day, Lord willing, we will be strong and ready to venture out into God's big garden!

Big Changes #2 ** Building Foundations

2012-01-25T06:14:00.000-08:00

I think we are all aware of what would happen if you started to build a house on a faulty foundation. When we had our Family Pow-Wow, this is the analogy we used to explain to the girls why we needed to make the changes we felt needed making. With a bit of explanation, they all understood the idea. We explained that, for our family, we had already been building on a faulty foundation. That meant we needed to undo parts of our house (get rid of things or activities), and rebuild (add in appropriate things and activities). Now, this sounds easy, but, as I told the girls, having to 'knock' out walls is hard work, time consuming and takes money. It's a lot easier if you build it right the first time around. So I explained that there was indeed going to be 'pain' involved, but that the end product would be *better* than what we had now.

It was definitely painful for them when they realized all we were taking away. There was no way to get around that. Pulling down the walls, was the easy part, it is the rebuilding that is hard work. But that hard work is now getting easier as we are all on board the family's goal wagon.

So that was the pep talk we gave to our kids. We gave them the illustration of the house foundation for them to understand better why we were doing what we were doing. After that explanation we explained that our true foundation needed to be on Christ. It goes much better to keep any spiritual talk on the positive. I've noticed that it doesn't go well to make this *huge* connection from taking everything they know as life away from them to God's word. I'm sure I am not explaining myself well here. Basically it's kind of like making your child write out scriptures for an hour every time they were being punished. They start to associate God's word with punishment. So for this part of things we kept it simple. A few verses were used to illustrate our point. Some were:

“It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

– Matthew 4:3-4

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
-Matt. 6:33

And we talked about the idea of seeds and how they grow. The concept of what you sow, is what you reap. We talked about how we realized that we were sowing the wrong seed. We don't know if we'll have time to put in a new crop (before our oldest two reach adulthood), but we certainly have to try, leaving the harvest in the Lord's hands.

Along with the Pow-Wow meeting, Jeremiah and I have had other times where we have discussed our marriage. I don't think there is a marriage out there that doesn't have problems at one time or another. Some have more or bigger problems I suppose than others, but I am certain everyone has problems. We are not the exception. Our true foundation needs to start with Christ, then the next level would be a firm marriage. This will be a work in progress, but for now we've made changes that we can live and work within. Jeremiah just downloaded a bunch of sermons on marriage and family. We plan on listening to one each night, or there abouts.

There is still much work to be done, but with our "Plan" and "Foundation" stages being addressed we are seeing a wonderful change in how we are addressing life. It has been wonderful to have something to hold up to help make future decisions. Is this activity going to help our family goals? Is this movie going to promote our family goals/values? Etc. The world has an agenda (known or not) and it is NOT for marriage, or for family. Our children, and dare I say we adults, are being taught something by everything we do. Everything. We are always learning. If we weren't then people wouldn't have to go to school to learn advertisement. But they do, so they can learn how to affect the rest of us. What we set before our eyes, WILL make a difference. What we listen to, WILL affect us. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but it will eventually.

Ok, enough of my rambling :-) Flannery just made an awesome kefir smoothie for us. I need to go make up some peanut butter pancakes for them now. A real treat as we are gradually coming off gaps intro!!

Big Changes #1**Evaluating the State of Our Family

2012-01-24T06:14:00.000-08:00

The changes we made were by no means a fly by the seat of our pants reaction to things going on around us. Jeremiah and I sat down on multiple occasions to access where we've been, what has been the results of what we've been doing and making plans to change things to get where we want to go. One of the biggest problems we had was that we didn't know where we were going! We pretty much felt that we were living life in survival mode. Just like running on a treadmill, running, running, running, but getting NOwhere. Not a fun thing. We needed a plan, even if it was a basic plan. We are confident that God will show us the next clarifying step, but we needed to make up an overall map, based on prayer and His word. We talked at length as the reality of what needed to be done was becoming evident, and it wasn't going to be easy. Some people think we are trying to play the Holy Spirit by 'containing' our children. Others have thought we are taking this homeschooling thing too far. But I dare say that a lot of people thought Noah was off his rocker for building an ark, but that didn't stop him :-)

So, what was the state of our family? We were pretty close to shambles. The easiest way to sum it up would be to say we all had big time heart issues. This is where anyone's problems start to be sure. For the specifics though...

Chaos, anger, laziness, bitterness, and more bad stuff seriously filled our home. To be honest we are still dealing with those, but there has definitely been changes for the good. It was pretty much each man for himself. In a large family that doesn't bode well. In any family that doesn't bode well! It just makes for more chaos the larger your family is. Anyways we realized that we needed to set our priorities straight. We decided to get an idea of where we wanted to go and then work back from there. Evaluating everything we were doing and asking if it was going to help us reach our goal.

We had lots of fighting going on between all of us. Laziness reigned. Getting the kids to do anything was like pulling teeth. They were all more concerned about their friends or computer games than each other. They were not thinking for themselves. Some were being influenced by the children around them (this was from church). Our family values were continually being challenged. We have no problem with talking about our values, why we believe the way we do, but this was not what was going on. We are talking about challenged as going behind our backs. And this is with just the children!

Jeremiah and I were on shaking ground for various reasons. For privacy we won't discuss those here, but suffice it to say things had come to a head and something needed to give. With an unstable relationship our family was on wobbly ground. Our time with the Lord was reduced to obligation. I still have a long way to go here, but at least I see the problem now. It's just the logistics now to set things straight.

Our home was a mess. Literally. We were being overtaken by our stuff! We weren't taking care of the things we had. The inside was a mess, and the outside was a mess. This was causing our animals to be sick. Some of the problem had to do more with our layout than an actual mess. For example goats really need to be rotated in different 'padlocks' as they are so prone to worms. We most certainly did not make out ahead with our goat milk last year with them being so sick for half the milking season. This caused us more work, more money and more time.

Everyone (including yours truly) wanted to just hang out in a world of their own. This was either computer time, games, videos, or walking around with an I-Pod in their ears. Some of us, not many I can assure you, had enough past training to get work done, so we didn't fall into an abyss. But we certainly were not being productive.

As you can see, it was not a pretty picture. Thankfully I had some good friends who gave wonderful Godly advice. They were patient with my questions. We have also read books in the past that addressed this very issue, and we had that information at our disposal as well. With this in hand, we started to carve out a plan. We knew that we needed to start with what God had already given us. We needed to focus our attention on the things were already doing, that would contribute to the well being of our family. We decided that we needed to do everything as a family. For us that included our wee little homestead. We thought that we should learn all we could to best care for the animals we had, and how we could best use the space of our land. This would give us something to work on as a family. Now, what did we have going on in our family that might interfere with that goal? Oh, boy. There was a bunch! Movies, games, computer, 'junk food' books and more. We realized that we needed to change our spending habits to facilitate these goals. There isn't a lot of wiggle room there to work with, so we are needing to get creative. As we were going over these things we knew that it was going to be important that we just didn't rip the rug out from under the girls. We needed to make sure we had a plan and options to work with. In the past our downfall was that we took things out of their life, but weren't putting anything in it's place. That was a recipe for disaster.

Once we were ready with our plan we called a Family Pow-Wow Meeting. We told the girls our plan. There were many an objection to be sure. But once they saw that we seriously wanted their input, and that we ourselves came to the table with options, the dust started to settle. In the next handful of posts I'll address each area one by one. Why we made a change, how we went about it, and how it's working for us now.

"The Big Changes" post

2012-01-23T06:12:00.000-08:00

It's been a few months now that we've made our "big changes". I have to say that it went smoother than I anticipated. We had about 48 hours of crying on and off about some of our changes. But once the girls saw that we were serious about what we planned on "adding" to our family they seemed to accept the changes. As a matter of fact, the other day when I was writing my last post Moira was reading over my shoulder. When I wrote about the things my girls are now doing since our changes, she chimed in with, "I'm so glad we made all those changes. We have so much time now to do the things we really want to do." I would count that as a thumbs up :-) I was going to go item by item in this post, but got caught up with saying things like, 'well there is a lot more to that that I won't go into...', and I realized that I should take each point by itself, in it's own post.
Before I begin I just want to add that we made these changes for many varied reasons. We have already come against some opposition about these changes. I would just ask that those reading will respect that we are doing what we feel is right for our family. Our choices have not be the most popular. Which is why it was important for us to find a group of people that accepted our decisions. This was for the peace of our family and so as not to dangle the proverbial carrot before our childrens' eyes. The changes in a list:

:: evaluating the state of our family
:: building a foundation
:: church
:: outside activities
:: twaddle patrol
:: clutter control
:: setting family goals
:: the next step

These will all have some over lapping similarities as to our reasons for change. But some have a different motive or a different way we decided to make the changes. We are in no way 'finished' with some of the changes, but for now it has more to do with consistency and fine tuning.

Getting out before the rain

2012-01-21T10:26:00.000-08:00

I've got a bunch of stuff I need to get done today. So this will be quick. I did finally assemble all of Saoirse's needed remedies, and we put an order in for the couple of things we didn't have on hand. When we get them in I may post them. But for now, here was our day yesterday.

One thing this diet has done, is seemingly eradicated Flannery's allergic response to cats. There would have been NO way for her to cuddle up with this kitty as she is doing above without her whole lower face swelling up with hives. She's been carrying this kitty around as much as she can and not one hive to be seen!!

Everyone, including the baby it seems, wanted to walk up to get the mail. Not me, I have been way too tired with this intro stuff and a baby who is NOT sleeping.

The girls are pretty obsessed with saving as much money as possible. Here is Saoirse rounding up any possible plastics and metals. Too funny.

I hope to always remember Jonah's taste in clothing :-) Strips, plaid, shorts with socks and 'dress' shoes.

Why do we have a bucket hanging from a tree you ask? I don't know. Maybe the girls are 'practicing' should they ever come across a maple tree that they wish to tap for maple sap (I love the ideas they get from our homesteading videos!). And as for the pinkness of this bucket...besides brightening the overall photo since it was so over cast this is the real deal color! I think I might need some sunglasses!

With all of the lack of sleep this guy has been giving me, all I can say is....thank goodness he's so CUTE!

Although at 3 AM he doesn't seem *as* cute :-)

He had climbed up,all by himself, into the stroller. He's getting so big!

Aubrey found some other fun stuff to play with.

The whole time he was playing with the straw he had this funny face going on.

Now that is one purple rope!

I really, really have to get on the ball to write up that post about us 'giving up' a bunch of stuff around here. It truly has made huge changes in how our children spend their time. Here is Flannery making a bird feeder.

Some of the supplies Flannery was using. We have all sorts of stuff around here to tinker with.

Alright! Time to get up and work. Have a blessed weekend.

Natural remedies galore!

2012-01-20T07:11:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, here are the supplements/remedies that I need to give to Saoirse. At the end I list some supp./rem. for some of the rest of us.

For Overall Health:

:: To get to the root of the problem we need to test for mold. I know that even if we still have mold it has to have decreased significantly as I am not getting back to back sinus infections.

:: Alkalizing drink. This will help with her sinus and bladder infections. To be taken 2 times a day.

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup of water

:: Health tonic. Or ACV shot :-) To be taken twice a day. (Recommended for all of us.)

1 TBS of apple cider vinegar

pinch of baking soda

wait till fizzing stops, then add:

honey to taste (I'm thinking lots!)

For the Sinus Infection:

:: Create a steam tent (boiling pot of water under a towel) with lavender essential oil and eucalyptus essential oil. Saoirse needs to breathe this in *every* hour the first two days, then go down to every two hours, then every 3 hours, etc. This alone is going to be very taxing as she is not old enough to do this herself, or even to be left alone to breathe it in herself.

:: Vitamin D3, 4,000 IUs daily to be broken up into 2 or 3 doses

:: Vitamin C powder with a pinch of baking soda in water. This helps to buffer the vit. C, making it easy on your stomach. Take to bowel tolerance.
:: Powdered magnesium citrate (do NOT use magnesium oxide), with potassium. Put in water. Take to bowel tolerance.

:: The 3 Musketeers (a natural antibacterial combo). Take this for 7 to 10 days:

colloidal silver 2 times a day

In a "0" size capsule put--

1/2 capsule of grapefruit seed extract

1/2 capsule of oregano oil

:: At bedtime fill humidifier with 3% hydrogen peroxide. Using food grade peroxide and diluting it is cheaper. Make sure to cover any nearby surfaces as it can 'bleach' them.

For Ear Infection:

:: Fill ear canal with hydrogen peroxide. Can use food grade to increase to 5 or 6 percent peroxide. Wait till fizzing stops, let peroxide drain out. She must do this multiple times a day till we observe no more fizzing. Fizzing signifies an infection.

For Bladder Infection:

:: We need to get some pH strips to check her overall alkalinity and for the UTI. (must be between 7.0 and 8.0, definitely not below that range.

:: Cranberry juice, 100% kind. This will be hard to take, maybe honey will help the medicine go down?

:: Urva Ursi, 1 pill 2 times a day, for 10 days only. Do not exceed 10 days.

So that is all for Saoirse's acute infections. As a maintenance she should take the following drink.

1/2 cup lemon juice (straight from the lemons), make sure to get some pulp in there

cap full of Fulvic Mineral Complex

pinch of baking soda

pinch of sea salt

Fill up a glass or water bottle the rest of the way with water.

The above drink can be used during times of dehydration, or used as a sports drink. If you have a child with a fever you put them in the bath tub with the following additives, and then give them this drink to sip while they soak.

For Bath:

1 cup baking soda

1 cup borax

2 cups Epsom salt

Then for me, our practitioner was able to see that I was having joint issues. It has been much better since being on GAPS. I used to wake up and all my joints were in a lot of pain. It would take me an hour to loosen up and be able to move without pain. With GAPS the pain is gone, but I do still have some stiffness. So I am supposed to take the following concoction:

1 TBS apple cider vinegar

cap full of Fulvic Mineral Complex

pinch of baking soda

pinch of sea salt

I am also to look into taking MSM, which is a sulfur supplement.

Our practitioner was very happy to see Jedidiah's progress. One of the most notable was that he is growing into his head. He is finally looking more proportional. This is a good thing. I was lamenting the fact that, although we have seen great progress with Jed, we haven't seen the weight gain like we would like. I was reminded that one of the first things our practitioner found when Jed was first tested, was that his heart was weak. As a safety mechanism a person's body will not outgrow its heart's ability to function properly. So it was suggested that we get Jed on the following:

:: Krill oil. Number one! Must get! Not sure how we are going to get him to take it. I'll come up with something.

:: An omega supplement

:: Magnesium citrate. I can probably put it in his smoothies

:: Possibly look into CoQ 10

:: Cyenne pepper would be helpful, but both of us couldn't think of how to get that into him.

For Flannery, since she is still having some pinching sensations, although MUCH, much improved. She needs to be on the magnesium as well. It looks to me like we will be investing in a bulk order of magnesium :-)

And finally some help with female cramping. One of our girls has been having very painful cycles and it looks more like a hormone issue. So for maintenance she needs to take kelp. You could use a good iodine liquid, but kelp is safer I guess. Also for pain, until the kelp corrects any issues:

Turmeric pills

Boswalia pills

MSM pill

Magnesium oil spray on skin over affected area

I do not know the dosages, you would have to read the bottles.

Well just looking over this list is exhausting! I guess I better get to work!!!

AS ALWAYS do your own research!! I am only sharing things that we plan on doing, this is not to be taken as medical advice. Please see your own health practitioner.

The poor thing!

2012-01-19T07:24:00.000-08:00

Must start school, but thought I would write quick. I am hoping to remind myself to write a full post on this as I need a safe way to store my information. Trying to keep three small papers safe and sound is a hard task around these parts. But those papers have all the information I need to help Saoirse get well.

We finally were able to see our holistic practitioner. Some may recall that Saoirse has been complaining of headaches, dizziness and stomach pain. On top of that I noticed her cystitis getting 'worse'. Well come to find out the poor thing has a sinus infection, an ear infection and a bladder infection!! The sinus infection explains her headaches and stomach pain (from the post nasal drip). And her seemingly worsening of her cystitis was just a bladder infection thrown on top. Needless to say this also explains her emotional breakdowns in the past couple of weeks. Basically she was at the end of her rope of feeling poorly. I would have taken her in sooner had she told me how badly she felt. She never had a fever, and pretty much lived a normal life :-)

The funny thing was that towards the end of her testing I was thinking to myself, "What in the world???? Is this diet helping us at all? Where am I going wrong?..." Soon after those thoughts entered my mind our practitioner says, "I know you may find this hard to believe, but Saoirse is actually very healthy. There's only been a few people I can say that are 'clean', but she's one of them. So you are doing a great job with this diet." Really? wow! Ok, deep breath in, deep breath out. The bottom line is that it appears we have not eradicated the mold like we thought as this is the underlying issue that Saoirse is facing. I have a long list of supplements and natural remedies that she has to start taking. Make no doubt about it, it's going to be labor intensive. I have to say that is one draw back with this holistic practitioner(h.p.) compared to homeopathy. With our h.p., you get her remedy and on top of it you have to take a bunch of supplements and natural remedies. With homeopathy you only need to take a single remedy a few times a day for only a few days. But, the homeopathy is a lot more expensive. Especially since they would see this as a constitutional case and not an acute situation. Oh well. At least I know what we are facing and that we have a means to beat it.

Alrighty, off to gather my girls to start our lessons. I'll be back later to write out all the info for what she has to take.

Replacing twaddle

2012-01-17T13:23:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned about ridding our home of twaddle. I think a post of all the changes we have made is in order, but for now here is one snippet of our changes.

Reading materials. It can be a tricky road to cover sometimes. Especially if you don't have the funding to buy books. We make it more of a practice to look for books that we would like for our children to read or use and then go to the library's online search to see if our library system carry any of the ones we deem fit. We 'request' it online, and it is on the hold shelf for us in a few days. This has drastically cut down on the twaddle coming in. My children were very fond of going to the library and searching for books. However, more likely than not, they came back with comics, or other twaddle books. They definitely had art books, or animal books that were fine, but too many poor choices were being brought in. There are only so many hours in the day and the thought of "did I want my child to spend their precious hours with junk food for the mind", made me stop and reconsider our ways. So this way isn't as fun for the kids, but has most certainly helped us to work towards our family goals.

That being said, there are days, like science class days, when it is too cold or wet that we need to pass one and a half hours...with 5 children. Not a fun time. So today I took them to the library. However when it came time to leave I put the children in the van and then went back for the books. I took this time to weed out unwanted books. Below you will see the choices we came home with. Because the girls' schooling is filled with living books, I use library books to fill in their interests. They were pretty excited about the new reads. Isabella LOVES (yes, with all caps!) The Self Sufficient Life by Seymour. She really wants to buy it, but it's a pricey book. So for now we just have to renew it. Hmmm, maybe that would make a good birthday present.

We got a few more that are not pictured, but the themes are all the same (homesteading, cooking, animals, or crafting).

Aubrey wants to get in on the fun! He's holding a book that the girls are going goo-goo over, called In*Jean*Uity. It's taking jeans and either embellishing them ( you can use the ideas for jean skirts as well), or repourposing them. We just got a bag of clothing off of freecycle, or the homeschool loop (can't remember), and it had two pairs of jeans that we couldn't wear. One had huge holes in the knees, and the other was a men's size that didn't fit anyone. We were going to get rid of them when I came across this book today. The girls have been hard at work cutting, measuring and sewing. Fun stuff.

Some snippets

2012-01-16T11:15:00.000-08:00

Flannery took this picture hte other day of two eggs. Both came from our chickens. The one on the left is a normal sized egg. The one on the right? What's up with that? Silly chickens.

Getting that creative feeling again. I already have two blankets I am working on. But this little project should be completed quickly and easily. Sometimes I just need a little something to make that won't take me months to complete. This is a crochet market (or produce) bag. We may use it to bring in our BJ's stuff. Not sure if that will work or not. BJ's is like a Sam's or Costco, so they don't have bags to put your stuff in. Not that some of it will fit in bags anyways. But when we get peanut butter, shampoo or almonds it can get tiring to go back and forth to the van when we come home with a van full of groceries...all without bags.

Jonah during school time today. Don't let these pictures fool you. I think taking a video would be much better to convey how a schooling day goes for us. It's pretty much half mangaged chaos. Let me assure you if it happens to be the bad half of the managed chaos, it's not a pretty sight. My children do not sit perfectly still all seated in straight backed chairs...all attentive. Ok, wait till I stop laughing.....Ok, now I can continue. But there are certainly our good days, and when I have those it's a nice break from the regularly scheduled chaos.

This would be the resulting mess of Jonah's "school time". I don't actually do school with Jonah, he just tags along and plays along with what ever we happen to be working on.

He is trying to learn to count...all on his own free will. Plus these cubes help with fine motor skills, right? Good thing he is only 3, and I don't have to worry about schooling him. I just get to be his mom :-)

Saoirse only needed a couple of these blocks to learn the concept of "even" numbers today. But like a lot of my children, once they get going it's hard to stop them. Now if only we could harness that energy towards their chores...hmmmm...

Jeremiah took this picture. He thought it was a wonderful sight to see all of our "funky" stuff on the counter. Let's see we have the two ferments I showed you all yesterday, then the two quarts of salsa, two quarts of the pepper/onions, two bowls of squash seeds soaking (only one showing right now), a pot of almonds soaking and a bowl of freshly 'harvested' eggs. We are really trying to work on getting our chickens to lay more eggs. We changed their feed and added some oyster shells. That really started to make a difference. Until we got a new wave of cold weather. The breed of chickens we have now don't do well with swinging weather changes. We heard of a breed that does, and are thinking of getting a few to see if it's true. I'm not sure how to spell the breed's name, but it's something like 'astrolop'.

Ok, off to finish cleaning my room. Jeremiah took the kids out to the store. I took a break to eat some yummy squash.

Loooonnnnngggg day in the kitchen

2012-01-14T18:23:00.000-08:00

It's been a long productive day! And it's not over yet! I still have three chicken roasters to debone and bag before I head to bed. Currently they are cooling so that I can handle them. So, while I wait, I thought I would recap our day. I was able to get everything I could get done, done. There are a couple of more things on my list that need doing, but I can't do yet as they need defrosting, or some other step to be complete. Hopefully this means we can start the intro diet tomorrow. I decided that spending an extra day prepping would be worth waiting an extra day.

All the girls helped out in the kitchen today. They were VERY helpful. There would be no way that we would have gotten everything done if they hadn't helped. Here is Flannery chopping some apples for applesauce. Applesauce doesn't come until stage four or five. But Jed may have issues with his blood sugar, like the last time, and I want to have this on hand. I have a couple of things lined up for him should he need it. I was trying to make sure it was closer to being gaps legal, and closer to stage 1 to get the most healing in.

She was pretty proud of all her work. I was too!

Saoirse helped me with the carrots. I made up a batch of fermented ginger carrots, and we peeled and chopped the rest for the freezer.

She was wanting to cut the carrots, and I let her cut a couple. I hate this stage where they really, really want to help by cutting, but they are just riding that fine line of ability to do so!

Moira joined in the peeling, chopping fun!

I've said it before, I really love the sunlight streaming into my kitchen. I tried to capture it, but wasn't exactly successful. This was the closest I could get.

There was some serious multi tasking going on today!! If not for myself, but with all my 'servents' running at once. You can see some of the works in progress above. By tonight I will have cooked 6 roaster chickens, bottle about 4 gallons or more of broth, have yogurt fermenting over night, 2 bags of yellow onions chopped and put in the freezer, 1/2 gallon of fermenting ginger carrots, 8 pounds of carrots peeled, cut and put in the freezer, 10 pounds of apples turned applesauce, 1/2 gallon of fermenting cucumbers, 2 quarts of fermenting salsa, 2 quarts of fermenting green bell peppers with onions, almost 2 quarts of ghee made, a few bunches of bananas put in the freezer, and a 3 pound bag of almonds soaking to be dehydrated tomorrow. PHEW!!!

Now this is a beautiful site. I can only hope they taste as good as they look :-)

You can see some of the dill floating in the cucumbers, and the yummy ginger and garlic in the carrots (there is garlic in with the cukes as well).

There you have it, my day in a nutshell. I am worn out! The girls are still going strong. Flannery is currently cooking some banana pancakes. After I debone the chicken I am contemplating making a hot cocoa as it will be a long time before I can have it again.

Jumping in again

2012-01-13T19:52:00.000-08:00

Sometime this weekend we will be jumping back into the GAPS intro diet. I've felt it necessary to do so since we have all stalled in our improvements. I can look at everyone and say, "Well this and this are better, but we still have that going on.." It may just be our bodies way of taking a breather before continuing on in their healing mode. Not sure. I do know that we have backslidden. No, we are not eating off of GAPS, but we are not fully eating *all* the really healthy foods we need to. For example it is suggested that you drink at least one cup of broth each day. We haven't been doing that. We only have broth when we have soup, which has only been about 2 meals per week. You are supposed to be eating a lot of fermented foods. Again, we are not. We have been eating yogurt at least 3 to 4 days a week, but that's pretty much it. I just feel we are not getting enough of the good stuff in that we need. My goal of re doing intro is to get back in the habit of eating those power houses. Jed has not gained any more weight in the last two months. Granted we've seen a LOT of other improvements in the past two months with him, just not in his weight gain. I know it is important for his brain to heal, and I know that it is, it is just hard to see him at a stand still with his weight.

So this weekend I have a long, long list of food prep we need to tackle to make things run more smoothly. Here is what I have so far:

ferment cucumbers (to make into pickles)
make and ferment salsa
make and ferment guacamole
boil up a bunch of chickens, freeze meat
cook a bunch of ground beef, then freeze
make beef stock (roast bones first)
make a batch of yogurt
cut and freeze carrots
peel, cook apples and freeze
make ghee
cut and freeze onions (two bags)
freeze bananas (for Jed if he starts to crash)
keep the broths going, pouring off 1/2 gallon each day and renewing water
order kefir grains and piima culture

Phew! We've got work to do! This will be on top of trying to get some other things done around the house, plus some yard work. We had our shopping day today and it went well. I only had 1/2 of it to do as Jeremiah did the other half. I was hoping to get the kids out to the park while we were running around town, but that didn't happen. I'll have to be mindful to get them out to play this weekend.

Tonight the girls were very excited that Jeremiah brought home some mung beans for them to sprout. Moira asked if they could get some. They have been watching the homesteading DVD's we have and decided they wanted to give that a try. They even video taped themselves preparing for the first step. I am really over joyed at seeing them work on such a project. Things really are changing around here, and it is fascinating to see. Just the other night we were hanging out with some friends. Isabella and her friend got on the topic of movies and computer time. Isabella said that she had neither (only the homesteading and gardening videos). Her friend, who gets little of either of those them self, was aghast...WHAT? What do you do all day? Well, I have to say that in the beginning, not a lot, as they wondered around here aimlessly. They knew not to complain that they were bored :-) Mommy has plenty of boredom busters!!! There's vacuuming, dishes, window washing, bathroom cleaning, laundry....the possibilities are endless really :-) To be honest I was wondering if they would ever find something to do. But giving them a 'banquet of ideas' to ponder, the time and resources (when we can), mixed with patience has really paid off. Don't get me wrong, we haven't "arrived", but how wonderful to see progress being made.

Alrighty off to bed with me. I had to skip out on posting my picture for the day on project365. Waaayyy too busy today to grab the camera. I did think of it, just couldn't grab it. Oh well. The perfectionist in me is dying slowly but surely.

project365

2012-01-10T12:41:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am crazy...why do you ask? Crazy about what? Another project. It is my ultimate goal and focus during my days to care and guide my children. I've heard many takes on a mom needing her 'own' time, to the opposite, that a mom doesn't, she just needs to wait till God provides her with a breather. I suppose I can swing both ways! But I try....note the word try...not to do so. I do have some interests of my own. Most of my interests are in the well being of my family...gardening, natural health, home education, sewing, crochet, etc...but a couple of them are more my own. The study of homeopathy falls into natural health, although I am the only one studying it. Photography falls in between my own and for my family. I started up so that we could have nice pictures of our family. But it is also an outlet for my creativity. Painting is out of the question as the set up and take down time is too involved. Not to mention too messy with little hands all around. Though I may try my hand at some water color pencils. Not to mention it takes some time to create a painting. And in my state of being, with little time on my hands I need to see some sort of results in reasonable amount of time or I get discouraged. Photography fit the bill to create and get results :-)

I try to get out with my camera to capture our life in the everyday, not waiting for a special occasion or moment. Now there are those that have an eye for things, and those of us who need some practice. Project365 is a site to upload one picture that you took that day. I like it because there isn't a theme, just a place to put your pictures. I suppose there will definitely be overlap between there and here, but for anyone who wants to really see just the ordinary...you can check my project365 page.

Just taking a quick break. I put the baby to nap. The girls only have dictation left for schooling. And we have a new kitten. Yeah, definitely crazy. Long story. I have to say it is pretty darn cute :-)

2012-01-07T17:26:00.000-08:00

We watched a wonderful movie last night! I think anyone who has even an inkling that they might want to take up gardening, or for those who already have a garden this is a must see. Everyone over here is fired up to make up a bunch more garden areas! Plans, plans, plans. Seed catalogs, diagrams, talking, thinking. Isabella signed up to receive some more catalogs. Because of the lay of our land we will have to get creative as to where these garden spaces will go. We have to have space for the goats to rotate living areas (still yet to be created), and we have to keep the goats out of the garden areas (read...we need fencing). Some plans are taking shape that will incorporate what we have available to us and what we can do in the here and now. Some plans may need to be done in stages as they involve money (like cutting down some of our trees). I was ~~drooling~~ eyeing some lovely fruit and nut trees. I would love to see some apple, cherry, elderberry, pecan, walnut and almond trees in our yard. Not to mention some blueberry bushes and raspberry canes around. We even went out today gather some things to start this process. Along the way we stopped at the park, because little legs needed to run off some energy. I took some pictures while there. You'll see our park time below, along with some pictures from here a home over the past few days. Oh, I almost forgot to leave you all with the link to the gardening movie. The best part is that it is FREE! You gotta love that :-)
Let me know how you liked it.
Back to Eden

Very rarely do we see Aubrey crawl anymore. But I got proof that he still does every once in a great while.

This was too precious. Moira gathered some greens to feed to the goats. Aubrey was totally entranced watching them eat.

And giddy!

Jed has really 'jumped' into being a dare devil. I swear he's going to give me a heart attack one of these days. Yesterday we were walking down the porch steps, and about 4 or 5 steps from the bottom he says, "Mommy, watch this." And he proceeded to jump to the ground! Oy. Here he is jumping off a small hill. Much safer.

Aubrey is still a bit unsteady on his feet, especially outside where the terrain is uneven. You can see the dirt on his back from when he took a wee tumble.

Tumble or not he just keeps on plodding, he's got 6 siblings to run after!

The girls were playing a tag game at the park today. I was able to snap a couple of pictures before they would have to run off as they were being pursued by "it".

Aubrey still has the need to taste everything he comes in contact with!

"Did anyone see that?"

Running off to play.

I would still love to get a group shot with all the children, but I felt that today wasn't going to be the day. So I just called over the girls for an all girl picture.

Then I called the boys over. They were all wiggle worms!

Jonah, who is usually a ham, wasn't in the ham mood, Jed was trying to be silly, and Aubrey wanted to get down and run.

Before we went home we gathered up some supplies for our gardening plans. I can't wait to share our progress.

Aubrey's first birthday!!!

2012-01-06T06:10:00.000-08:00

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY AUBREY

Yesterday was the big ONE! Our wee babe turned one year old. Wow! Seriously the time goes so fast! Aubrey was up early. Jonah woke up way too early as well. So I put Jonah back to bed, and took a little snooze time as well :-) Aubrey fell back to sleep for a bit as well. He took an amazing afternoon nap, which let me get a bunch of things done. Things like make his birthday dinner and cake :-) Isabella made the cake, and I made the frosting. The frosting was a new recipe for us. My first attempt was a failure. The second attempt came out perfect. We made a plain vanilla bean cake and I made one batch of vanilla frosting and one batch of chocolate frosting. You should have seen Aubrey's eyes light up with the first lick of the frosting! He wanted to dive right in! We let the cakes chill in the fridge a bit while we went outside to play. It was growing dark and we didn't have much time before coming in. I wanted to make sure to eat early so that Aubrey didn't crash before it was time to have cake or open his birthday present.

Everyone loved, LOVED the cake. And it seems like we hit the jackpot as far as the gift. Everyone wanted to play with it. It's only a set of wooden nesting boxes. It was a fun evening for all. Here are some pictures of our day and celebration:

Saoirse took this picture. Aubrey was much too interested in what his brothers were doing than looking at the camera.

Moira has done a lot of work in this front garden area! You can see there are some tall weeds at the end of this area. The whole area was covered in those weeds, but she pulled them out. I started to watch this great video on gardening last night. I decided to watch the rest with the family. Because we have done away with movies (all but educational ones) the girls get pretty excited about watching a homesteading movie! They really want to grow a big garden to store food and to sell some of the extras. So I think they will really enjoy this film.

Saoirse wanted me to take a bunch of pictures of her :-) She's our photogenic one.

Hanging with our cat. We were loving on him. He was kind enough to bring us a present today, his first. I was beginning to wonder if he was earning his keep :-)

Aubrey wanted to try on some boots, either that or it was Jeremiah who wanted him to try on some boots. Ha, ha! One way or the other it was pretty cute, and short lived. As soon as he took a step he stepped right out of them!

Jed wanted a picture of his cars.

A boy can't have too many pictures of his cars.

Aubrey was a whirl of activity! It was hard to get a picture of him that wasn't one big blur.

He's really into climbing now a days.

I'm bummed that I didn't get a clear picture of daddy and his boy. It was getting dark.

It was time to come in and have some cake! Oh, wait, first we needed to eat dinner. Chili was on the menu as that is one of the easier meals for Aubrey to eat.

The girls reminded me that we had to have Aubrey partake in the one year birthday tradition.

Most of our babies picked up two objects at the same time. Aubrey was very decisive and chose the tomato firm and square. That means he's supposed to be a farmer when he grows up ;-)

Finally it was cake time. Looks to me like Aubrey enjoyed himself.

Making sure to get every last lick!

After a quick bath it was time to open the birthday present, but not before a little dancing. Aubrey was dancing in a circle and clapping his hands.

Ooh, what's this?

It's mine to play with? (technically yes, but try telling that to all his siblings :-))

Trying to figure out how these things work.

All this celebrating is hard work...time to take a breather.

Back to the Books

2012-01-02T19:15:00.000-08:00

Today we had a very light school day. Very light. Jeremiah was home and I still had a bunch of things to do to get our house in shape before our next semester began. I would say that I am 90-95% done with the purging. I am in my bedroom and bathroom, making progress. It has been a juggling act of putting their second semester plans together, purging, regular cleaning, the holidays and cooking. Thankfully Jeremiah really jumped in with both feet to help! I would be totally overwhelmed by now if he hadn't. Phew! I'm glad that most of the work is done, but not so glad that it took me all two weeks of our break to get it done. I will still have to do some things come the weekend. Jeremiah suggested I do a bit each night. But I just got done putting together our schedule and I have no free time all week long. Well, maybe a wee bit before bed, but I already know from experience that I will be exhausted by then. Come late night it is time to read, blog or crochet. If I can even manage that.

Not sure what to make of some of the issues we've had going on here today. I am wondering if some of the children snuck illegal foods at church yesterday. Flannery has been a basket case. Big time!! A wee bit of her pinching sensations, having melt downs, and seems to need glasses (she has been holding her reading up to her face. Although it may be more of a tracking problem then a sight issue, time will tell.). Saoirse has been over reacting to everything and anything. I asked her to do something, but didn't hear a reply, so I repeated myself. Mind you I really thought she didn't hear me so my repeat request was just like my first, calm and normal. The child comes up to me crying and carrying on how she heard me, and why did I have to keep repeating myself, etc!! What? Total meltdown. Jonah was pretty touchy today as well. I have one word for all of this..."tiring". Yup, that pretty much sums it up. On the other hand Mr. Jedidiah seems to be our little comedian. Who would have thought. He will say or do something silly and then say, "I'm just kidding." He then goes on laughing about it. I should get it on video sometime because I know I'm not explaining it very clearly. He really just keeps growing mentally/emotionally. I would dare say physically as well, but haven't checked his numbers. Today I was cleaning out my closet and came across a box of tubing, syringes and even a sealed box of a new g-tube! I promptly threw them out!!! Wooo-hooo!! No more tubes, thank you very much :-)

I would like to put together another post of our school stuff soon. I first want to get a feel for how this is all going to work. I kept the skeleton of our first semester and added to it. Threw in a few organizational tools and am hoping for the best. Here is a wee snapshot of our schedule. I'll take pictures and links to any helps that I found to help us continue to improve our learning time.

Tomorrow we start back in full. Tuesdays are hard as we have science class. Not to mention that it will be very cold out tomorrow, making outside park time during class not an option. Hmm, we will have to get creative. Maybe go to the library for a bit. That's what we usually did, but I am trying to stay away from all the twaddle as my kids go nuts over it and I've seen a lot of positive things going on without it, so I want to keep it far from them.

We also need to prepare for Aubrey's birthday. He's going to be one years old this Thursday!!!! I can hardly believe it. We bought him some wooden nesting/stacking blocks. We wanted to get him a couple of small stuffed objects to 'hide' in the blocks, but couldn't find what we were looking for. I still have a ton of felt left over from before Christmas and may use that to make a few small critters to add to the birthday fun. We will just need to add a yummy birthday bean cake with chocolate frosting, a candle and we'll be set. We'll have to make it on the early side as he's been getting sleepy around 6 pm. Nobody likes to have a tired birthday boy.

Off to bed, hope you all had a wonderful start to the new year!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T20:57:00.001-08:00

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Total Odds and Ends

2011-12-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

Not a lot of time to post, but wanted to add these odds and ends. I've been talking about purging the house for some time now. We've done some work, but it has been taking WAY too long. So I had to lay down the law :-) No going anywhere, or having people over UNTIL ***ALL*** the purging is done, in every room of our house. So there :-P I know it is going to be a whirl wind couple of weeks until the new year. I have a lot of new things planned to be added into our school semester, one of which is not spending all day doing chores! I think the girls are excited about some of the new things. I am sure some of it won't be so exciting. Isabella told me last night she was excited to start a Book of Centuries, a Book of Firsts and for us to put on a play. The girls were talking last night which book (one of their literature books or a Shakespeare play) that they want to do. I told them they would make up the play, make costumes, and that we could get some white sheets from the thrift store for them to paint scenes on. Anyways, all of this will not be accomplished if we find ourselves having to constantly clean the mass messes around here. I told them that after the purging we will be instituting a schedule for school time so that one girls will be with the boys at all times. It's the little guys that make the most messes. Both those measures should help. Off to exercise (making progress!) and clean. Here are some odd placed pictures:

After we made our jars we set them out on our porch one night. We stood out there for a prayer time and then made some hot chocolate (half gaps legal...no cocoa is allowed, but we used almond milk and honey for the other ingredients). I've really enjoyed having these colorful jars around. We need to light them up again. We've just been so busy we haven't thought about it.

Another picture of jars. Are you all getting tired of seeing our jars yet :-) Hopefully not. There are more jars below...but with a different purpose.

Ahhh, now this would be some great jar content! Fermented salsa. I made 6 quarts, and all of it's gone. Granted this picture is older...maybe a month or more. That was a lot of chopping! I bought some more ingredients to make up a couple more quarts.

I was having a huge fermenting/whole foods cooking day that day. Along with the salsa I was making yogurt (in the green crock) and chicken stock in the black crock. I also was soaking beans and making a new fermented beverage....

Beet Kvass! I have one word for it...YUCK! Ha! However yucky it is it is supposed to be a huge liver purifier. I keep forgetting to drink it because it's so unpleasant. Maybe it's saltiness has subsided by now? One can hope.

And this my friends is what my kitchen looks like when I do a whole bunch of fermenting and cooking. Don't worry, it got all cleaned up....a few hours later :-)

Moira's Mouse

2011-12-14T06:40:00.000-08:00

Moira asked me to ask everybody to see her mouse which she wants everybody to go to her blog to see "Squeaky" which is a crocheted mouse that is very adorable. Here is a sneak peek


This is "Squeaky"

That's all for now.

Love,
Me

Play Time in the Cold

2011-12-11T16:38:00.000-08:00

Please note that "cold" is a relative term :-) It was a whopping 50 degrees out the other day. You'll see that in some ways our time is the same. Some things differ, like when Jonah catches on that it is much colder than the day before. Jeremiah helped to load the pictures and decided to add captions to them. I decided to leave his up (His will be in black) and to add mine as I had planned (in blue).

My new Danskin clogs

See, layers were in order. Hey, you Northerners....you know you can get hypothermia in 50 degree weather don't you?

Aubrey exploring... dirt.

This little boy's footsies had to be covered...no baby toes to admire.

Aubrey sharing his rock

Aubrey learning to share. I'm sure it is easier to do so with a rock, let's see if it transfers over to when he has some ice cream :-)

Flannery's left foot, painted nails

Sandals are still in use in these parts.

Carefully making hopscotch fun

Hopscotch in miniature.

A girl and her grid

This game of hopscotch was done in jackets and shoes!

Shoes definitely not required

Apparently the shoes didn't last long.

I'm, like, reading

We have a wide variety of activities we do when we are outside. Running, building, creek wading are popular, but every once in a while it's nice to be outside with a good book.

Uhhh, yeah, still reading

You can't see me!

Trying to keep warm as we wait for friends to arrive.

Peak-a-boo!

Unfortunately our friends were not able to make it. So instead we just took some pictures.

Austere pre-teen

Moira while waiting.

Jonah cuddling up

Jonah finally figured out that it was cold outside. He went in to grab some blankets. It was soon after this that we headed inside as everyone was chilled to the bone.

Yep, still reading... and Jonah is cuddling up

Jonah tried to share Bella's blanket first, but then he decided he needed his own (as seen above).

There you have it. Our weekend was rounded off with church and hanging out around here. I've gotten a ton of their school planning done so far, but more is needed to be done. The reason it is taking so long is that I am trying to incorporate two curriculums together. We are also putting in the other 'subjects' that we were not doing last semester. And because we hadn't been doing them it is taking me some time to figure out how to best approach them so that our days run smoothly. I'll show my new schedule when it gets done. We are taking a mini break from school for the rest of the year. The oldest two have one more science class (it resumes in January), and the girls will be doing one math lesson daily (as they are behind). Other than that my focus will be to get their schedule done and to finish our decluttering.

sub

The Christmas Pictures

2011-12-10T15:14:00.000-08:00

So we set up a little area in our bathroom (which has the brightest light in the house), to take some pictures. Isabella mentioned how we should get some professional pictures taken for Christmas. Well that just wasn't going to happen. So before I knew it the girls pulled out their makeup and dresses and asked to get their pictures taken here at home. We put up a white bed sheet and taped some Christmas lights to the sheet for some sparkly glow. I'm not sure if the glow effect worked as well as we hoped, but we did get some nice pictures. You may have already seen these on the girls' blogs, but if not, here they are:

Isabella

Moira

Flannery. For some reason she didn't want to give a big smile.

Saoirse, who is looking much older than her 7 years.

Jedidiah. Scrapes, bumps and all :-)

His pictures are on the dark side as I didn't edit them yet.

Jonah

It was impossible to keep this boy in one spot!

Aubrey

Cute as usual :-)

Christmas Pictures, trial run

2011-12-08T09:05:00.000-08:00

In photoshop my pics were looking digitized, so I am posting some here to see how they show up. Sometimes weird things happen in other programs, but work out fine on another venue.

And make sure to take a look at Isabella' blog to see a lot more pictures!

games

2011-12-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

Any guesses as to which outside game the girls decided to play? I think the first picture gives it away. It was supposed to rain this afternoon...we're still waiting for it to start. So we got outside earlier than normal. It was a balmy 70 degrees out. After the rain it's only going to be in the low 50's. Brrrr :-) We were supposed to run a couple of errands, but were locked out of our van. One errand will wait till tomorrow, the other, well they came to us. We had company over and they left behind something. It was a wonderful time of fellowship. Take a peek at our outside time.

Does this give our game away?

The making of the game. Since we don't have a hard surface and chalk we have to draw our game this way.

Someone's hop, hop, hopping.

Another hopper, with two very attentive siblings who are making sure the rules are adhered to.

Turn over.

Shoes are not required. Yes, it is December.

Flannery's turn.

Waiting.

Camo and butterflies. Hmmm.

This little guy is no longer content to stay in my arms when we are outside.

Look at him go!

Oh the faces :-)

Mmmm, dirt.

Must. Have. Baby. Feet.

Yet another attempt for a group shot. I only got this one picture as my camera battery gave out. Bummer. Try, try again.

Outside time

2011-12-03T16:42:00.000-08:00

A few days of pictures from the out of doors.

Just starting out. Bucket in hand.

Leaves are always a good thing to fill a bucket with.

Jed becomes apprehensive over the goats.

This picture and the next are out of order. This would be Jed after I have reassured him that the big goats are not in the middle area.

This is Jed worried that the big goats may come after him. They have a tendency to nibble on his ears, and he does NOT like that!

Moira decked out in a dress and work boots. Who says you can't have style when you are raking leaves?

Jed and Jonah love to push Aubrey on the swing. Jonah prefers to twist Aubrey around.

As you can see, Aubrey doesn't mind one bit.

Jed's turn to rake the leaves. He still prefers the two colored boot look.

Aubrey enjoys being on the ground now to explore. Unfortunately that involves test tasting! Yuck!

He was showing Saoirse his new found treasures, which dropped out of his hand right before I clicked the button.

Flannery's swing is up and running.

Trying for that sun flare look.

I had to ask Flannery to be still so I could take a picture. Getting a still picture of Flannery is hard to come by.

Contemplating life.

The sky looked really beautiful the other day, with the moon out.

One of our favorite rocks (the big one on the left).

Jonah was very upset that he missed out on helping Daddy fix the porch pickets. He had to make up for lost tool time :-)

He decided to dig up a bunch of dirt with the hammer. At least I didn't have to worry about a banged up finger!

These wood boards serve as a ladder for the girls to get over our back fence. Sometimes they have to catch a chicken, or an escaped goat, and with no back gate, this was the easiest set up.

I've really been into sky pictures lately.

Pippi. She's such a sweet goat. No, really. I never thought that goats had personalities....until we had some ourselves.

Our new addition to the farm. This my friends would be a male. That means we should have some baby goats in about five months, and that spells m.i.l.k. :-)

Some two handed photography going on. Ha! I just went around taking pictures of all sorts of odd things.

Trees, lower branch in focus.

Now that lower branch is out of focus, but you can see the rest of the tree. I love aperture :-)

Hammer. All alone. No boy in site!

Just some weeds up front. But I thought they looked nice. At least up close. They reach about 6 feet or so.

The gate that children MUST stop at when we go fetch the mail. They always run ahead and this is the designated stopping place. The road that we live off of is 55mph.

Walking, or running for some, back from the mail.

The majority of the trees around us are oak or pine.

Only two leaves were left of on this tree. I really loved the deep color.

The next couple of pics are of Aubrey and I had to desaturate them as the orange in Jeremiah's shirt was reflecting off of his face. With as round as cheeks as he has, he sort of resembled a pumpkin :-)

This sweet babe is getting his top teeth in. Ouch.

Ok, I'm melting now. I just want to eat him up.

Aubrey has learned a few handy skills, such as pointing.

And waving.

The sky above our house this evening.

I surrender.

Well, not before I find some more treasure.

Craft time

2011-12-02T04:50:00.000-08:00

This year I decided that we should make some decorative items for the Christmas season. Last year was taken up with the preparations of a baby coming (can you believe Aubrey will be a year old next month!!). Only the essentials got done. On top of that we have really been working on our goals to unify our family. That includes no movies, or computer games. We've already bought a bunch of board games for us to enjoy as a family. Next up the sleeve are some changes in our focus in homeschooling. Maybe putting on some plays, learning musical instruments, or starting a 'tea time'. On shopping day I bought some cheap supplies for us to make some crafts. Following the Charlotte Mason idea that handiwork should be productive (no pipe cleaner and paper crafts that do not serve a purpose) I came up with a couple of ideas for us to work on. We had a bunch of glass jars that I had saved, and I bought some tissue paper to make the 'stained glass jars' you see below. I also bought some felt and embroidery floss for us to make some ornaments. This was the first time in a LONG time we all did a craft together. Everyone enjoyed themselves, and everyone loved how they turned out. I took a few pictures of the decorating, and some of the finished jars.

Jed and Jonah really enjoyed making these. Jed's was quite unique in that he didn't want his papers to be glued flat to the jar.

I was surprised that he really stuck with this to the end. I thought the stickiness of the glue may have overwhelmed him (sensory issues), but he did great!

Each of the girls had an idea of what they wanted theirs to look like. Some wanted a color theme, some wanted their papers to be ripped as opposed to cut. Flannery wanted only one layer of the papers with little over lapping.

I thought my middle kitchen counter may never be the same again with all that glue :-) Thankfully we cleaned up right away and it was easy to clean. Jonah was a bit obsessed with the glue. He wanted to keep painting it on, and painting it on everyone else's jar. That did not go over well with the others.

Here they are all lined up. Jonah's is way in the background. He kept coming over and moving it out of the line up. Silly boy.

So from youngest to oldest, here are our creations. This is Jonah's. It has abut 50,000 layers of glue on it :-) But I have to say he really did a great job.

Jed's creation. I love the rough around the edges look.

Saoirse's. The girls have been working on making things for each other for Christmas, and so a lot of time they are off in different rooms of the house to make their things in secret. So this was a nice change for all of us to be working on something together.

Flannery's jar. It was neat to see them all really taking care in the making of these. It wasn't a case of just slapping on some paper and pouring some glue over it. They really had a plan in their head that they were following, even if their goal was just to have a different color touching each other.

Both Moira and Isabella decided to put some shapes in theirs. Hearts to be exact. Here you can see one of the hearts on Moira's jar. Her hearts were scattered over the jar.

Isabella's hearts were evenly spaced out. Unfortunately it was hard to see when the lights went out. She used a red background with yellow hearts on top. In the light they show up, but disappear when the lights are out.

Even I got into the decorating spirit. I decided to go with a rainbow theme.

I love how the lights reflect on the table! We all really enjoyed our evening of candle light.

A new family record broken!

2011-11-27T19:37:00.000-08:00

We have a new family record. We have a new earliest walker! Aubrey started standing on his own when he was 9 months old. It didn't look like he would take any steps soon though, so I thought we would have a tie of our earliest walker being 11 months old, which was held by Moira. However, it is official, Aubrey at 10 months old is now our earliest walker. He's pretty pleased with himself. He still crawls as fast as he can when he really wants to get somewhere. But if he's already standing he will try walking first. He only takes about 8 to 10 steps at this point. I'll have to get a picture of him walking.

Where does the time go?

Thanksgiving

2011-11-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We did. It was just us :-) We were invited, last minute, to join another family's celebration, but decided to just stick to home. Things have been a bit stressful over here and the thought of keeping track of my children in a house not familiar to me just didn't seem very fun/relaxing. Not to mention all the food that would have been off limits to them. We learned after last Sunday that it IS important to keep to the diet. The children each had two meatballs at church fellowship. Two meatballs from a bag. That equals food coloring. That then equals to four children totally out of control. Big time! I certainly did not want a repeat. So we made our own feast right here at home, all GAPS legal. And a feast it was! We had roast chicken (we prefer chicken over turkey), "potatoes", "stuffing", cranberry sauce, squash casserole, deviled eggs and some amazing pumpkin pie. This was very, VERY filling food. Everyone took what they would normally take on their plate, but we filled up way before our plates were cleaned. I had made up a batch of vanilla yogurt to go over our pie. It was delicious.

Thankfully I made sure to get a head start the day before. This was good for a couple of reasons. One being that a lot of these recipes were new to me, and that makes things go slower. The other was that there was a lot to chop, cook, assemble. But it all got done, in a relaxed manner. All the kiddos helped out as well, making it go faster. Below you can see some of our spread. You'll also find some quick snapped pictures of us putting up our Christmas tree the following day. Putting a fake tree together when you have 6 people helping really does make quick work! When the kids were too little to help it would take Jeremiah and I forever to get it up. For some reason we were short a string of lights, so a run to the store was in order. Christmas music in the background, lights, ornaments and hot apple cider. Oh fun! The baby was amazed by all the sights. He did a great job just hanging out and not getting into everything. That's a plus :-) Jonah, on the other hand....oh that boy. Thankfully he's really cute :-) Ha, ha!

Our cranberry sauce. This was devoured. No left overs.

The marshmallows! Oh, yum! More will be in our future :-)

Unfortunately the marshmallows melted too much, we will take note of that for future use. In front is the stuffing.

Pumpkin pie. This was great!!! Just like the real deal.

Aubrey was loving the action of putting up the tree. So much to see and do.

Ooh, what's this?

Jed was a bystander, or sitter. He was keeping guard of his dinosaur stocking.

Christmas music playing in the background on Pandora.

Flannery unpacking the nativity scene.

Jonah checking out the angel, and Isa trying to get in the picture.

Flannery had the honors of putting the top of the tree on.

She needed a bit of a lift.

After the lights were hung it was time to hang up the ornaments. Lots of handmade ones. Thinking we need a new round of ornaments to put up. I may have the girls help make some felt ones. I like non breakable :-)

Aubrey taste tested all of the ornaments for us.

Each of the girls have a few ornaments that are theirs only. They made sure to get those up out of the way of little hands.

Everyone pitching in. Seriously, the tree trimming gets done faster each year!

Saoirse decided to use the box that houses our Christmas things to get a better spot.

Some dancing was in order.

And no need for holly when you have a cute cherub to kiss.

Our Purging Weekend

2011-11-12T17:04:00.000-08:00

So far so good. Although I wish we made a bit more headway. But every bit counts, right? My laundry room looks awesome. All the rooms got cleaned, and the girls say that they have all their things boxed up. I'll go in there later to take things up to the attic. Then we will have two rooms done, oh wait, no three, as they say their bedroom is done.

After doing a bunch of work, we took a break and went outside...ya know, for some vitamin D :-) I was thankful for a warm day. I've got another sinus infection in the works, so I'm trying to cut it off with some sunshine, garlic and some echinacea/goldenseal pills. Everyone has been, for the most part, feeling ok. A couple of minor issues. However, Saoirse is still having headaches, and feels dizzy, although not as often. I think a trip to our holistic practitioner is in order. I need to find out the root cause of it. Otherwise I'm not sure how to address it. The headaches started after we started the diet, and when she came down with croup. Not sure if those are coincidences or not, but I would like to find out.

When we went outside to day the baby was napping (Isa stayed in to listen out for him), and I took my camera. Most of the time, like 95% of the time when I am taking pictures I have a baby in my arms. It's a nice change to have two arms free to take pictures. Below are some of my two armed photos :-)

I love capturing the normal everyday things around here. I have been trying different styles of photography to see what fits me best. I love the photography style of SouleMama, and other 'real life' photographers. I have another favorite, but her link is on the other computer. The first thing Saoirse did was to gather up the eggs. She didn't want to take them inside, so she spent half her outside time making a special spot for them...you'll see where at the end of this post.

Jonah and Jed spent most of their time chasing chickens. Jonah was successful, Jed was not.

A chicken whisperer in the making?

Jonah found a seat to sit in to hang out with his catch.

I have a feeling that the good feelings are only one sided, especially when Jonah gets ideas....

...ideas like giving a chicken a ride.

I love the different colors of our Americanas. Some are dark, like the one above, and some are a cream/yellow coloring. Very pretty.

This is a Buff Orpington. I just liked the set up, with the chicken running in the foreground, and a peek of Jonah running in the background.

I decided to check on what the other girls were doing. You can see them in our woods.

They were goat sitting :-) We let the goats out to get some roughage.

Flannery was working on something.

Banging away.

Gathering up rope.

Ta-da...a swing. Now where to put it?

On a low lying limb. However, there was a large stone under the swing. We persuaded her that it wasn't the most wisest of spots.

Moira was working on something as well, but I never found out what.

Sometimes things come out a bit blurry, or 'off'. But I found that I still loved the 'captured moment', blur and all.

It's not about the perfect shot. It's being there. Hanging out with my kiddos and taking a snap every now and again.

I enjoy trying to capture different angles.

Capturing life. That's what it's about.

I really love this one.

Time to head back to the other kiddos. Saoirse, Jed and Jonah are afraid of the goats. So they stayed behind the fence. Jonah was hanging on the fence trying to see what we were up to.

This one is pretty cute.

So here are those eggs we saw in the beginning. Saoirse made a nest for them. Yes, a nest. But where was this nest?

Ah, yes, of course. In the jogging stroller. Thankfully this is a play stroller :-)

Organizing School

2011-11-11T16:20:00.000-08:00

I'm sure I mentioned in the beginning of our school year that I did things differently this time around. I really, REALLY love Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy. I wanted us to succeed at implementing her methods. We have a LONG way to go. I still need to delve into her books to get a better grasp of all aspects of the philosophy. Bit by bit! Last year we tried our hand at the Charlotte Mason method, and it was pretty much a flop. But it had nothing to do with the method, but with ME. It got to be too overwhelming to try to find our place in multiple books. Most were online, where a bookmark is not possible. And with our real books, we kept losing the bookmarks! Oy, what is an organizing mama wanabe to do? Well, keep thinking of a way to make it work, that's what :-) Over the summer I brainstormed. Yes, this actually took brain power to do, I'm not organized by nature, so I actually had to sit and think on it. I took my annual trip to McDonald's with my *huge* bag of books, pen, paper and other stuff. I like to get away to plan our next school year, but I can only do so come night time (when babe is asleep), so that leaves little options open to me as to where I go :-) Anyways, I sat and thought out what days we would read each book. Then I thought out how I was going to make it happen. And here is what I came up with.

For our online books:

I actually took screen shots to show you all, only because I am so computer illiterate that when people try to talk computers my mind spins. I like visual. So here is my visual tutorial on how I make this less painful to do during our school time:

Ok, above you see my screenshot into window's explorer on my laptop. Below is where I normally access my folders, right on my desktop:

Those 'graphics' documents are not normally there, they are the graphics I'm using for this post! Ha,ha. So just ignore them. Off on the right hand side you see our school folders. We are still in the first trimester (3 weeks left), but I just got done organizing our second semester stuff, so that is there too.
From the top down, we have: Term 2 together (the things we do all together, like art study, and composer study), Year 3 AO-2 (Year 3 Ambleside Online, semester 2)...and I think you can figure out the rest from here.

If I were to click on the Year 3 AO-2 folder this is what I get:

Above you see the books I will be reading to Flannery and Saoirse for the second semester. These are the books that are free online. We will get a couple from the library as well. If its time to read Children of the New Forest, I just give it a click and....

We come up with each week of the second semester. On a sheet of paper, in my school organizer binder (tour of that coming up) I have which days of the week that we read each book. If we are to read Children of the New Forest today, and we are in week 13, I just click on the week 13 folder. When I do that we get this:

We see we will be reading chapters 1 through 3. When I click on the above document it opens in Word. And off we go to read!

This does mean that I have to separate each online book into separate documents. Most of the books on our schedule tell you how many chapters you are to read each week. Some just tell you to read 1/12 of the book for the week, leaving the guess work up to me. It took me a couple of nights to do our first semesters planning. But I was able to do the second semester in a couple of hours, now that I know what I am doing.

What do I do with our real books? How do I keep track of what page we are on? Colored paper clips! And when I have two girls in the same book, but on different pages, I just use two different colors :-)

The yellow one is for Saoirse, and the orange one is for Flannery. This is their phonics book.

See? I just flip to the page with the paper clip, and the side of the clip that is more like an 'arrow' is the page we need to read. Something this simple makes my life so much easier!

Now for a look into my school binder. I have a simple 1" or 1/2" yellow floppy 3 ring binder. The first two pages are for the order in which we do things, and which days we read their books. Above is Year 6 (Isabella and Moira). The things in orange we do together (all four girls). Then the older girls go off to do the rest of the things on the list. I read to the younger two girls, and help them with the things they can't do on their own. We have not been doing spelling like we should, I plan on making sure to get that in there for the second semester. I really like the All About Spelling program, I just need it to work for our family. I don't do well when I have to go all around the house grabbing our school stuff. We plan on doing our big house purging this weekend, I am hoping that I can find a way to make some of our other schooling things work for us. I also need to work Jedidiah into the works. There is a year 0 I believe, that I may start Jed and Jonah off with. I think Jed would do well with regular phonics lessons.

After the daily schedule, are our attendance records. There is one for each girl. I blocked off the top that has private information :-)

After the attendance records I have a monthly calendar. I have a whole year, and when I'm done with one month I move it to the back of the pack.

After my monthly calendars I have this yearly one. I use it to plan out our vacation days. I make sure to do it in pencil as illnesses and other surprises come up and I need to rearrange things. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not strict with this! But I do try to make sure we get our required 180 days of schooling in.

All of the other above papers are in the first tab of my binder. Behind the second tab you will find the detailed reading schedule for Ambleside Online that I got off of the Yahoo Group. The one above is for Year 3, the first semester. There are some books, mostly history, that we do not read. Jeremiah has his own plans for history for the girls, so we go by a different reading plan.

I didn't take pictures of the other things in my binder as there are only some blank schedule sheets, some scripture encouragement, and the GAPS protocol outline (the different stages).

There you have it. Finally finding my way in the sea of homeschooling :-)

WOW!!!! Oh. My. Goodness.

2011-11-09T08:30:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know, two posts in one day. I just published my first post, then had to change Jed. Like I said below, he's really been eating a lot lately. His cheeks (before he got his fat lip) were looking more full. so I decided to go ahead and weigh him. Weighing Jed is still stressful to me for many reasons. I almost fell over with the numbers I saw!!! It might not seem huge to some, but for Jed, this is HUGE!! The last time I weighed him he was about 28.2 (or 28.4, I don't remember off the top of my head), but today he is 30.2!!!! That's two pounds, TWO pounds in one month. You have to understand that since we started this diet, only two months ago, he has now gained 4 pounds. This is AMAZING!!!! Jed gained all of 4 pounds for the WHOLE entire year (from August 2010-August 2011). He just gained that in two months. I have tears in my eyes. This is like the icing on the cake, with all the other improvements we've seen in his behavior, and speech in these past two months. There have been days when I really want to throw in the towel with this diet, but we've stayed the course. I'm a realist though :-) Jed has thrown us for so many loops that I don't hold my breath. But I've learned to celebrate any steps forward that we do have. And right now I'm celebrating. I might just whip up some Vanilla White Bean Cake to celebrate!! Yup, I just might.....got to go make some cake!!

Family Pow-Wow

2011-11-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

A quick update on Jed: He seems to be doing much better. His lip was noticeably less swollen this morning. When I asked if it was hurting him, he said, no. For the past few days (before this happened) he has really upped his food intake. Please pray that would continue. I would hate for the antibiotics to mess up any steps we've taken forward.

Ok, we had our Family Pow-Wow. It went well. Much better than I had anticipated. I think part of that was that the girls were able to deal with the blow that we were pulling them out of soccer, before we had our meeting. There are a few very hard decisions that we've had to make. This has been hard on all of us. We've even got some criticism from others about our decisions. Let me repeat what I've said before....Parenting is HARD! I don't pretend to know what I am doing. I am sure some of our decisions are right on, and maybe others are not. Either way, we are continually putting everything before the Lord. And we know that He will guide us. If we take a wrong turn, because we weren't listening, well He can help turn us around. So what went on in our pow-wow?

We told the girls that we've made many mistakes. We told them that we wanted our family to operate in love. We wanted to really focus on ALL of us changing our attitudes towards each other, and towards God. With our current activities we didn't see that working...it hasn't so far. So we explained that changes....lots of changes were going to need to happen. We also told them that all changes were so that we could move on to do *more*, but for now we had to be living with a lot *less*. We wanted them to know that what might seem as restrictive, was actually for our eventual growth and freedom. I had come to the meeting with a list of ideas to implement and things that needed to change. I wrote down everyone elses ideas that they had. I think overall the meeting was a success. Now Jeremiah and I need to sit down (this is going to take an on going commitment to our vision) and lay out the steps that we will take to reach our 'goal'. Some things we figured out right away, others will take time to implement, or money to save to make the needed changes. But we really wanted the girls to *see* for themselves that we do indeed have a plan and that we are working on it. I think in the past we just kind of sprung it on them that things were changing, and they had no input. Nor did we really stick to our plan, as we didn't have one! Plus, we took things away, but replace them with good things in its place. We made sure to take all of these past mistakes into account this time around.

So why the changes? Quite simply: Our childrens' hearts. We've already lost one of them, with a couple of more on the line. We totally take responsibility for the state of our house. It is our fault that we've let our children's hearts grow cold. The biggest changes are for US, as in Jeremiah and myself. We have not been loving our children as we should, nor encouraging them. On top of that we've let a lot of outside influences in. Some children can handle those things, IF they have been built up, and strong. This is not the case for ours. And as such, not only do we need to change, but we need to make a bunch of changes for the kids. Below I've kind of listed out what our Pow-wow idea sheet looked like.

A note though on some of the items. Some of them may seem a bit odd. But one thing we really have never worked in or towards is a family vision. We don't have a clear cut one for now, but there a certain things I know we are working on. I think a good model would be that the man and woman marry and they have a plan of sorts. Something they are working on together. Then the children come along and help them in that work. That does not mean that they can't have their own things they want to pursue or enjoy, it just means that there is a family togetherness that works towards a similar goal. For us, we never really had that, and the whole idea of each man (or kid) for themselves had moved in to our home. Maybe that is how a lot of people live, but that has proven to be unsuccessful for our family. Trust me, there are many days where I don't know which camp is correct. And it makes it all the more confusing to see our children failing, mostly because we've been trying to have one foot in each camp. So we are trying to pull the one foot out, and move it into the one camp. Anyways, when you see "dehydrating" on the list it may seem totally odd. But that dehydrating is a part of what I deem 'family preparedness', and it is a goal I would like to see us implement, and do *together*. So on to the list:

(These are not in any order!! Just our thoughts thrown on to paper.)

Allowances
Scripture memory
bean chairs--chairs for their bedroom for us to do one on one Bible study
Abortion clinic--witnessing
Bulk cooking--to make a lot of this happen
4-H classes--we will look into, but only if as a family
Camping
Running/exercise as family
expand garden--to preserve and sell
Really working on taking care of our animals
Schedule--loose, but make sleep and meals consistent
Bare bones house--taking all, but essentials, and putting it into the attic
Huge cut backs on computer--no games for now
No library books until house in order--girls keep trying to sneak off to read instead of doing their work
Tire or disk swing
Sand box
Practice frugality
Thrifting
Sewing/crochet, etc
Preparedness-dehydrating, planning, drills
Games--family night, board games, outside games
New rituals--ex: bonfire reading w/ hot cider, family read aloud
Home speech therapy
Art
Making books

That is the list. Although I am sure we will be adding to it, and prioritizing it. But at least we have something to work on. Must go. We've had a lazy morning. Jeremiah took Moira on a field trip. The rest of us kind of sat around :-) Sometimes these things happen. But off to work now!

Prayers for Jed...and Me...and...

2011-11-08T17:45:00.000-08:00

well, lets just make it for the whole family shall we?

So, what's up with Jed? It never is a dull moment around these parts. Yesterday proved that all the more. I was sitting in the family room, right outside the boys bedroom. I heard this "thunk", or maybe more of a "thud", but it was quiet. I was actually surprised to hear Jed start crying, as it didn't seem like whatever happened was that bad. After the first couple of seconds of crying I could tell, this was more serious than I first anticipated. I had the baby in my arms, I can't remember what I was doing with him, but I couldn't just plop him down. I called one of the girls over to grab the baby so I could go see what happened. As Moira was walking over to me, she could see into the boys room. She *exclaims*, "MOM, Jed's bleeding, and there's blood EVERYWHERE!!" Um, that can't be good. I asked her where he was bleeding, and then, "come take the baby!" She was able to tell me that he was bleeding from his mouth. I hate facial injuries. I'm not sure why, but they really freak me out. So I was able to get to him, and see that he was indeed bleeding, a lot. We got him ice, and applied pressure. After about 10 minutes I gave him some Motrin for any pain and swelling. I had him rinse with water so that I could have a look. Well, it certainly didn't look pretty, but I really wasn't sure if it was stitch worthy. We held some more ice, and rinsed some more. The cut (which was caused when his fell on his bed frame...that was the "thunk") was only about 3/8 of an inch wide. It was certainly jagged, but didn't seem very deep. Little did I know, that was just the edge of the gash. I had him rinse multiple times the rest of the day and would keep looking at it to see how it was doing. There was the obvious swelling, and some bruising, and the cut. It looked yucky over all, but again, not stitch worthy. Until....today.

This morning Jed's lip was more swollen then the day before, but I expected that as he hadn't had a round of Motrin in the over night hours. We needed to get out to get the girls to their science class. The rest of us hung out at the park, until their class was over. I was getting Jed strapped back into his car seat, to go pick the girls up, when I noticed his lip looked funny (on the inside, but seen from the angle I was at). I pulled his lip back a bit and I just about passed out from what I saw. Did I mention I don't do well with facial wounds? This 3/8 of an inch cut was more like a 2 inch gash!! The swelling that happened overnight had pushed what ever part of the gash that was holding together on it's own, totally wide open!! A longer story made shorter, Jed was seen in the ER. It had only been 24 hours, but the wound was *already* infected!! What!?! My sister told me that mouth wounds were *really* bad, but I was still surprised that it was already infected in such a short time. So Jed started a round of antibiotics this evening. But because mouth wounds are that bad I am asking for prayers for a quick healing. Let's just say I cried a river of tears over it all this afternoon. Due to one word....abscess. I really can't go there again. Please pray that the antibiotics cover his infection completely, and that no other complications will result.

As for me? Sinus issues again. Sigh. Cold? Yeast? Not sure right now. But what I do know is that whenever my sinuses get "wet", I 'catch' a bacterial infection. I just got done with a round of antibiotics last month. We are still adhering to the GAPS diet, and I am positive, that in the long run we will overcome all these issues, sinuses included. However, it's going to take time. In the mean time, I need to find some way to lessen the likelihood of getting 'wet' sinuses. Not sure if that is even possible. Either way, prayers are welcome. I was so very sick with my last sinus infection, I most certainly won't let that happen again, but non the less it's disturbing to think I'm heading down the sinus infection path so soon after the last infection.

As for the family? Well, just to cover our bases ;-) I will be writing about our family pow-wow that we had a few days ago. Good stuff, hard stuff. Right now I'm off to wash out Jed's mouth, then put the boys to bed. I think I will be hitting the hay myself after that. The baby has been waking up at 5:30 since the time change. Speaking of the time change, I think I want to sue who ever is in charge of this time change for loss of sleep :-) Can I do that? ha, ha!!!

The Sweet Babe

2011-11-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

Big sister and little brother

2011-11-03T07:07:00.000-07:00

Yummy breakfast

2011-10-31T07:33:00.000-07:00

Let's start with last night, first. We had a bon fire, as seems to be a custom of ours when the weather turns colder. We had a couple of families over and it turned out to be a wonderful night. The girls wanted to dress up, as we are not partaking in halloween. That was fine by us, as there is no harm in playing dress up. We made some healthy candy apples, some hot cider and a wee bit illegal hot cocoa drink (no cocoa is allowed on the GAPS, but we did make it with homemade almond milk :-)). The apples didn't turn out too great as we didn't allow enough time for the caramel to cool properly. They still tasted yummy.

This morning it was time to think what we would have for breakfast. Eggs? Ugh. Smoothie? That was a favorite choice, but no frozen bananas around. Hmmmm. An almond muffin creation? Nah. How about cake? Yes! There was a white bean vanilla cake recipe that I was hoping we could use for our birthday celebrations. I thought about waiting till Aubrey's birthday to use it. But then I thought, what happens if it tastes bad? So I made up one trial cake. It is not like a box cake, obviously, as it's made with white beans. But we've been on the GAPS diet now for two months, and this was a wonderful treat. I used less honey, as we were eating it for breakfast. But everyone thought that that it didn't need any more honey, they liked it just the way it was. Everyone wanted seconds! But we didn't have any. We only got one piece each. Go HERE for the recipe. I made up some strawberry topping, and we had a bit of our caramel sauce left over from last night that we drizzled on top. It was a winner.

Homeschooling. I had some thoughts on that today. Some good, some sad. I've been a bit consumed lately with other things on my mind, as so I haven't put much thought into our schooling. I really do need to read the whole Charlotte Mason series. I will make it apart of 'my curriculum' :-) Anyways, there are some wonderful blogs out there that others journal about their experiences with Mason's philosophy of education. Wow, I have so much to learn. And here was the sad part...I really wish I had come accross this philosophy before we started homeschooling. I know I can't turn back the hands of time. I just think about all there is to learn about this schooling philosophy, and how short our time is left with Isabella's home education. Only four more years! I need to dig in! Plus I realized that when I start teaching Aubrey the basics, Isabella will have graduated!!! Oh. My. Goodness. The good news is that I am glad I found this philosophy at all, and that we *all* will benefit us. I am praying that Isabella will be able to take what she has learned and apply it to all her life. Speaking of which we are needing to make some big changes in how we do life. Yes, I've talked about this before, and we have implemented a few things here and there. But every day it is more evident how far off the path we are.

Off to life. Errands to run, food to make, school to do, outside time to partake.

Isabella on the prairie.

Isabella better watch out for the Indians.

Cake time! Nothing like being able to eat cake for breakfast :-)

Pictures with captions...no time for a real post

2011-10-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

Some weeds right outstid our door.

I really want to try to get the hang of sun flares. This is my second attempt. I'm not really sure how other people do it. I'll have to look into it...you know...in my spare time :-)

Just practicing trying to take pics of different objects at different angles.

Probably some photography no-no, but I really liked how the sun was streaming down right no her face.

Saoirse is usually very willing to get her photo taken.

Our rooster.

The past few days were beautiful! In the upper 70's.

I made sure we got some outside play time in.

Lots of digging going on around here.

What is this goat up to?

Very silly indeed. Face masks are not for eating.

When I came over to her, she was acting all innocent.

A new friend we made as we were making our way inside.

Some new digs for me :-) The last time I bought a pair of everyday shoes was 8 years ago. I find it very hard to get a pair of shoes that look decent and are comfortable.

Clog style shoes. Dansko. Wonderful. But expensive!

Yesterday was going to be the last 'warm' day of the season (so it seems). So we made for the park with our lunch.

Children all abuzz over the food. They weren't the only ones. After about 10 minutes the bees were buzzing! So we finished our lunch in the van.

Chicken salad. A great way for us to use up left over chicken that isn't enough for another meal (by itself).

A sprinkle of parmesan cheese is a must.

After we ate the kids ran for the playground. I held back and had a photo shoot with my yarn.

My new work in progress. Saw this wonderful pattern on the Attic 24 site. I needed to get the colors out in the sun. I'm having a hard time seeing if the colors are working.

I'm not too fond of the yellow. I really wanted the darker yellow, but they don't sell it at the store. After using it I am getting used to it. However, I really wanted a couple extra colors in there. I'm not sure if they are going to work.

These are the original colors I was going with. On the left is the beginning of the blanket. After the red would be the blue you see on the left.

On the right, you can sort of make out the dark purple I started to add in. It seems to go with all the colors, but the yellow. After the purple would be the blue, then white, and then start over from the beginning. Just as I lined up the balls of yarn above. But it seems the purple just kind of doesn't belong. What do you all think?

While I was doing my yarn photo shoot, this is what the baby was doing. He was sitting right next to me playing with my camera bag.

All the kids enjoyed the new area of the playground.

Climbing the 'rock'.

Jonah up next.

Isabella had a bit of a problem with this part of the the playground :-)

Jonah giving Moira a spin.

Flannery showing off.

Jed having a fun time navigating things.

I attempted to get a group shot of all the kids. I'm looking to re-do my blog header. No such luck. It was *very* sunny out. So I could only find shade or full sun. Not the best. Here was one attempt.

I really liked the location, but way too sunny. On top of it I over exposed the picture. Alrighty, how about a third time?

No, too many shadows on the faces. But I thought it would look cute with them on the "pods". Oh, well, I'll have to try again later.

Isabella brought her journal along. It seems to be her constant companion.

Flannery begged me to take a picture of them on the swings.

Pirate Jonah.

Big sis with little bro.

Aubrey loves the swing.

Sweet, sweet, footy goodness :-) I love baby feet.

Today was totally different! This was what it looked like out back.

Sweaters, jackets, socks and blankets! (Oh, my)

Now that's the way to warm up!

A new look

2011-10-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

This was something I was thinking about doing for a while now, changing up my Blogger template. I got the nudge when I received a comment about my pictures being all squished. On my computer they look blurry. To me, this was rather annoying :-) So this morning I tried to change things up. I'm not sure if Blogger is having issues, or they limited their editing possibilities. Either way, things are not as I would want them to be, still. Sooner or later (probably later :-)) it will get there. Until then, please excuse the mess, that I call "my blog". My goal is to get more of the look of my photography blog.

In other news....I've sat down with the girls a few days in a row now to talk about how things need to work around here. Lets just say things have been a bit chaotic. My plan is to totally go through each room, getting rid of all non-essential stuff. For example in their bedroom there will only be their beds, and they will each get a book, journal and pen. That's it. This is going to take a lot of work, but it is necessary to save my sanity. Basically the straw that broke the camels back was the fact that we got the house all cleaned. Then for a few days I made sure each dish was done, and all the little things got picked up throughout the day. Then I had a bad day, was too tired, and in the waking hours of that one day our house was trashed. I'm not talking about a bit messy, I mean TRASHED. As in, I would be totally embarrassed if someone came by unexpectedly. Oy. So we are going to try to cut down on all the things that need taken care of. Then we will be reassigning room chores. The girls have been having the same room chores for the past two years or so. Time to change things up.

In Saoirse news....That same day of her adjustment she had a lot more dizziness and headache. Yesterday (day2) she was complaining more about her head and dizziness than normal. Today, she said her headache was better, but she's still really dizzy. I'm concerned a bit since her headache, which was once bouncing around to different spots, has been static in her forehead. She goes back on Friday for us to see if she retained her adjustment. We will go from there as to what to do next.

Flannery woke up this morning with a sore throat and headache. Really? At this point I may give everyone daily doses of Motrin just so I can pretend no one is sick :-) Never mind we still have our "bug" problem, and I have not been able to keep on top of everyone putting on the cream and changing sheets daily. I am hoping to do what I can to keep them at bay, and then hit it hard when we come up for air. Right now I feel we are drowning. Too much work, and not enough time to get it done. One major problem is laziness, my children's laziness. Must. Be. Stopped. Ha! No, seriously, I've been really angry about all the issues going on around here. Yes, I know anger isn't going to help. I've been in prayer for direction. I don't have answers yet. I am proceeding with just clearing out things and am hoping an answer will be given soon. I'm thinking some radical stuff needs to happen to change our ship around. I may just keep my laptop out to check email, and the other computers be put up for now. There are so many excuses we make for them being here, but they are a big hindrance in our family for right now. We really, really need to focus on doing things as a family. Learning skills, doing projects, NOT surfing, or playing games. Please note, I'm just as much guilty as anyone else is in the house. We have the computers locked, but I think it's a lot like food....if it's there we will eat it. If it's not, we won't eat it. So the computers need to go, they are only here due to our own addiction to them. Don't get me wrong, I've learned a lot from reading blogs and what not, but for a season I think the surfing needs to go. I may only allow us to blog on the weekend and block all other sites. In the meantime we purge. Although all that purging will go in our attic! Right now I do not have time to go through it all to see if we really need to keep it. I think if it's up there and we forget about it, then we can get rid of it. If we keep saying, "gosh, I wish we had that item down here...", then we can think about bringing it down after a few months.

Alrighty, everyone is done eating breakfast, so off to do school, and purge :-)

The fair, and other stuff

2011-10-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

First my update on Saoirse. Her issue? She was the first to come down with the croup.

Along with the hacking cough also came a headache and dizziness. No biggie, she's sick, it's to be expected. However, three weeks later, the cough gone, she is still feeling dizzy and has been having daily headaches (unknown to me). She's not dizzy all the time, nor are the headaches there all the time, but certainly to be having them for three weeks is a bit much. We were thinking it was an inner ear problem. I was thinking that up until last night when she told me she had a headache. Then she said she's been having headaches ever since the dizziness started. Well, that pretty much threw me for a loop. Now what? So we decided to first take her to the chiropractor. Since this came on at the same time as her illness I was assuming it may have been related to it. However, we've had too many 'coincidences' of late and I wanted to make sure we covered our bases. But no need for anything more invasive or extensive if she just needed an adjustment.

We were able to get an appointment for this morning. Turns out her head wasn't screwed on right :-) In other words, she was waaaayyy out of alignment. With the adjustment the chiropractor said she immediately felt her head get warm (a sign that blood was flowing in) and the swollen lymph node on the back of her head was almost gone after a few minutes. We think at this time that it was being out of alignment that contributed to her dizziness and headaches. We are to take her back at the end of the week to have her adjusted one more time. We are to keep track of her dizziness and headaches to make sure they are getting better. If not, then we take a different step. Until then, we wait and see.

I finally was able to upload some of the photos from the state fair we went to last week. It was very windy and cold! By the time we were leaving the wind died down. Figures. But we all had fun. We were all worn out by the time we got home.

After looking at all the animals we took a lunch break. I wish I could say that I packed us a GAPS lunch. Not so. I wish I did, as Moira got very ill later that night! This is the one time we have all cheated. Not bad for being on the diet for two months.

Besides food and ride tickets we made one other purchase, an iron triangle. Let's just say that yelling (screaming) out back to get everyone inside was growing old. We plan on hanging this up at our back door. This should also take care of the, "I didn't hear you." claim :-)

Aubrey was quite fascinated with the thing.

He confirms that it is indeed loud!

Jed was waiting for the rest of us to get done eating.

Food on the go.

There was LOTS to see for this little guy.

Flannery and Saoirse were blessed with a free sample. It's a clay frog.

Pretty cute.

Flannery counting out her change to see if she has enough money for a trinket.

Moira up on the Farris wheel. I can assure you I did NOT take this picture. Jeremiah and the older three girls went up. You couldn't pay me to get on that thing. They were all scared at some point as it was so windy the whole thing was shaking.

Flannery on the death, er I mean, farris wheel.

Isabella on said wheel.

The rest of us, who were not on the wheel :-) I was trying to get Jed to follow my finger up to see everyone on the farris wheel. He still has a hard time with directions (spacial). He finally got it, but it took quite a while.

Isabella just hanging out. We were waiting for Jeremiah to get back with the ride tickets.

See, everyone was tired by the end of the day :-) Isabella walked around with him like this a long time.

A little outside time

2011-10-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

I was able to get outside for a bit. It's been a while since we've had a but if reprieve from people being sick. Although Saoirse has been a bit 'off'. I won't go into it right now. I'm not sure I can deal with any more issues. Hopefully in a day or so we will see where she stands. Don't worry, she's not feverish, or sick. She's just been dealing with some odd issues lately. Please do pray for her though. And for me for that matter. This mommy's heart can only take so much. I'm going to see if we can get her into the chiropractor to see if she can help us out. I'll write later about it. For now I am just plain tired out. I was able to get outside with some of the the kiddos. The goats had gotten in our garden area. To get them out we lured them out with some pepper plants. The funny thing is that there were peppers still growing on them! Here are a few pictures below that I took today. I have a bunch of others that I want to share, but they will have to wait as I am having trouble with Blogger.

Three green peppers picked today from our garden.

They were small ones. Small or not, they will taste good in my egg omelet :-)

This little cutie had a blast in the swing. Its really hard to pin point, but Aubrey seems to act older than he is.

His smile can really melt my heart.

This is Amazing!

2011-10-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I think it is amazing :-) As most of you know Jedidiah is a bit behind in many ways. Mostly with physical growth, but also in social aspects. I don't think we will have issues with learning, except possibly reading due to his apraxia. There have been many things that we take for granted that our children do that Jed just has not done in a normal time frame. The one I am about to show you may seem small, but when compared to the other small things that he's been doing lately, I think it really adds up. I want to say that I have no idea if this is a coincidence or not, but I've definitely noticed small changes in Jed's social behavior in the past two weeks. It could be the diet, or just a coincidence. But I do find it odd that we were not seeing a change in these areas for months, and now we are. Again, I can't say for sure. What I do know for sure is that Jed is getting a plentiful supply of healthy fats, which are very necessary for his brain development. We also know for sure that most of Jed's issues begin in his brain. So, again, maybe coincidence, or maybe the diet. Either way I'm pretty happy about it. So just what is so amazing with Jed these days?

One thing I have really noticed lately is his interaction with his siblings. He is seeking them out to play. He is really being involved with the baby. He will be concerned about things on the floor that Aubrey may put into his mouth. He will play with the baby, trying to make him laugh. He's also doing a lot more talking with his siblings (and us), and they are understanding him more, so there is more of a 2 way communication going on. This is all amazing. We have been concerned about Jedidiah's tendency to be want to be alone. We would have to coax him to be involved in what we were doing. This has gotten much better, but with some room for improvement. He started to do some pretend play a while awhile ago, but it has really blossomed these past few weeks. And today I saw another milestone of sorts (at least for our family), Jed drew his first recognizable picture! I'm not really sure at what ages that children start drawing certain things, but I know that Jonah, who is 3 has already started to draw people (with a body and appendages sticking out of the body, no head). Jed has done his share of coloring pictures from a coloring book, or coloring a blank piece of paper with a lot of different colors and strokes. But today, he came up to me to show me his picture he drew and I was blown away. Here it is, not very good quality, so I took separate pictures of the different things he drew:

At the top right is a banana, in the middle (in red) is a snake, and the bottom right (in green) is a turtle. I'm really impressed!

Here is his banana, with the brown at the top and bottom, plus a brown line along the contour.

I really love his turtle. It is hard to see from this picture, but he has one big eye on its head :-)

Thinking ahead

2011-10-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

For quite some time I've felt the need to gather up some supplies. Mostly of the food type :-) With the uncertain times we live in, it only seems prudent. Of course there was so much to be done around here that it has only been a thought. As I've looked into it I've been a bit overwhelmed by the how, and what. How to do it and what to use. I've been reading, and watching some videos. I love the idea of canning. I really love the idea of canning meats. Goodness knows how long it takes to defrost meat to be able to use at dinner time. Plus there are veggies and fruits to consider as well. But when I factored in the veggies and fruits I had to start think of *where* I would put all of this. Then I came across the idea of dehydrating foods. I was going to just skim over it as I really didn't think you could do much in the way of dehydrating. Boy was I wrong!! It looks like this would be the best way to preserve our fruits and veggies. They would take up a lot less space, and they retain most of their nutrients. With canning, the veggies and fruits loose up to 60-80% of their nutrients. With dehydrating they only loose 3-5% of their nutrients. There is a blog and a whole bunch of videos about dehydrating that I would love to pass on as they have so much information and inspiration. I'm pretty excited to have found a solution for being able to store more food without taking up a lot of space.

The blog (which has a lot of info in the "helpful hints" section):
http://www.dehydrate2store.com/

There are videos on the blog above, and different videos (by the same person) on their youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Dehydrate2store#p/u/14/DfQg0hzFihM

I hope you find the videos as informative as I have. We have a five tray dehydrator that we've had for a few years now. I never thought of using it for all the various foods and herbs. I also was given a food saver that I haven't utilized yet, but now I can't wait to pull it out and see how this all works. I don't have the best of these things, but I will use what I have to see if it will be what will work best for us. I'll let you know how it goes. On my most recent shopping trip I bought an extra bag of frozen blueberries and strawberries to give it a whirl.

Back to work I go :-) I don't have to do as much work for our "bug" problem as before. That will let us work our way back into our regularly scheduled program.

Our Anniversary Getaway

2011-10-15T14:59:00.000-07:00

Jeremiah and I had our wee little getaway on Thursday and Friday. And like everything else in our lives all this year, it wasn't without a major bump in the road. Some of our kiddos were sick and I was worried we would have to cancel as some of the people who were going to watch the kids are immune compromised. But our small group insisted that we were to go, and they would take care of the details! Jeremiah got sick the day before we were to leave, but felt much better the following day. So with a bit of trepidation we set out to the coast. We took Aubrey with us, as he's still nursing. About 20 minutes into the ride he started to cry. Oh boy, I thought, this may be one long ride, with more than 2 hours left to go. I thought his cry sounded a bit 'off'. More of an "I don't feel good" type of cry as opposed to the "I want out of my car seat" cry. I was hoping that I was wrong. He soon fell asleep and stayed asleep the *whole* way! Jeremiah got out to register for the hotel room, and the baby started to stir. So I thought I would get out to stretch my legs and pick up the baby. I had only one foot out of the truck when the baby starts this hacking cough! Oh. My. Goodness. You. HAVE. To. Be. Kidding!!!!!!! NO, no, no. No kidding going on. Let me give you a little sneak peak to what was to come:

From that moment on he sounded all raspy while breathing. After we settled into our room we figured we would make a game plan for our day and a half stay. The baby started to feel a little warm, and I saw my future evening being spent in the bathroom with a hot shower running to produce steam for the baby to breathe. So we looked for a health food store so we could get something for him. While we were there it was evident he was getting worse by the minute. He soon started coughing and choking. That was not fun. So we decided we should head for an urgent care office. Thankfully there was one right across the street. Unthankfully, they do not take children under one years old. Right there in the office he had another choking session and the nurse just stood there and said, "Sorry". Yeah, that's going to help a lot. So we had to get directions for the ER. There were a LOT of people in the ER. Seriously I've never been in a nosier ER in my life! It took almost three hours before we were called up. There was no type of triage that I could see going on. They called us up and got a band on Aubrey and took his oxygen levels and temp. Thankfully, even though he was having a hard time breathing, his O2 was 100%, his temp (by ear) was 103.3. They took him back to a room.

From there it was a long evening. Unfortunately we had a doc who was not too understanding of our non vaccination decision. I can't count the number of times he said, "Well, since he's not vaccinated we have NO idea what could be going on with him." Really? Well, maybe you can try the idea that three of his sibling have the same goop and they are fine? They decided they wanted a rectal temp to get a more accurate reading. Well, that really did things in, as it was 105. Then they were really freaked out. A bunch of tests, and blood draw later, they determined he probably (although, ya know, they can't be certain since he's not vaccinated) that he probably just had croup. He got some Motrin and Tyenol, a liquid steroid and a breathing treatment. It took a couple of hours, but his fever went down to normal and he was able to breathe easily while resting. He still sounded all yucky if he was moving about or crying. We didn't get out of there till almost midnight. Which I was glad for, as they were talking about admitting him. And that was our first day of our getaway!!!! Oh, I thought it was pretty funny that when Jeremiah asked for a blanket for the baby, this was when we were in the waiting room and I didn't have a diaper bag with me, the nurse said she would get him a quilt. Jeremiah came back to our seat and told me what she said. I thought, we only need one of those white hospital blankets. But she came out with a Project Linus quilt for him. So I made a joke with Jeremiah that we were building our blanket collection by collecting Project Linus blankets from various hospitals :-)

Thankfully the baby was back to himself (well, with a cough) the next day and we went to the aquarium, did some shopping and went out to dinner. By dinner the baby was worn out and it wasn't exactly a romantic dinner :-) We headed back home and picked up the kiddos from our friends. I think we pulled in around 10:30 PM or so. What a long few days. I am grateful that we were able to redeem the later half of our trip. I would put up some more pictures but I am really worn out. Today was shopping day and the shopping HAD to be done. So off I went with Moira and the boys. We hit the health food store, BJ's and Walmart. We still have to get some produce from another store, AND I forgot to get frozen veggies at BJ's. I got home, the girls put things away and I was confronted with the ever present question that comes up around the 5 PM hour....."What's for dinner?" Jeremiah said we could go out to dinner, but something tells me that with our trip and the added ER trip (which we were not counting on) we are going to be a wee bit tight come the last few days of the month. So that means I need to think of something. We are all getting really sick of the same four meals that I've been cooking for the past 6 weeks or so. I might try some turkey sausages. They are supposed to be made with ground chicken, but that was a lot more expensive than the ground turkey. I think it will be an egg and sausage night :-) Off to cook din din.

Still alive

2011-10-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Still here, just been very, very busy. If all the work I am doing is successful, then I will be back to share what I'm doing. If it's not successful, I'll still be back to tell you what I was doing :-) But all this "doing" is seriously taking up all my time. As if I had a bunch of free time on my hands to begin with. We had to put schooling aside this week as the workload increased by ten. We are still having to do all this work, but now there is a bit more rhythm to it, so I will be adding schooling back in. On top of what I have going on a new sickness has hit the house. People I am seriously going to rip up my bathroom floor all by myself if we don't get rid of this mold soon. The mold is the culprit to all our illnesses. The non stop illnesses were what happened back in our last house, which was mold ridden. When we moved here all of that stopped! At least until we developed a mold problem in this house. Of course when we moved in here Jed was a newborn, and all the energy that went into dealing with multiple sick children was just redirected to all of Jed's issues. Non stop. Of course there is a bit of a catch 22 involved with this mold problem. We were already immune compromised from our poor diet, which would leave a person more prone to being affected by the mold. The mold however is further weakening our immune system, making us even sicker as the months go on. Saoirse stared with a sore throat yesterday. I thought it odd that the sore throat was further down in her neck. Today she has a bit of a hacking cough. Oy! Our new diet will *eventually* help us, but we are still having to battle the mold at the same time. I'm on antibiotics now for a wicked sinus infection, and I can pretty much assure you that 2 or 3 weeks after my antibiotics run out I'll have another sinus infection. I'm ready to move into a tent :-)

I was able to actually get the boys outside the other day and took a couple of pictures. Nothing too exciting, but I'll post some when I get a chance. Take care!

Really?

2011-10-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, I am really, really trying to tell myself over and over again that a Christian can not be cursed (disciplined, or put through trials, yes), but it's getting really hard to believe. On a good note I feel much better than I did two days ago. On a bad note, after two days of no throat or ear pain, it's back....and that's with me on an antibiotic. So we have a couple of possibilities. One is that the antibiotic is not working, two, I now have a viral infection on top of the bacterial infection (assuming it was bacterial, and I am since I had it for 6 weeks), OR third this is fungal in nature, which just means that the antibiotics will not only not work, but they will make things worse. Ya gotta love that last option. NOT! It appears that my rash is the worse case scenario, and that will mean a LOT of work...a LOT. I want to cry. This rash is contagious and to ensure no one else succumbs I have to do all sorts of vacuuming....daily...and laundry (as if I don't have enough of that on a daily basis). Since I was so ill I've started to at least treat it with some natural products, but will probably go get a prescription, because I really can't afford to go buy some more natural stuff, for it not to work, and head to the docs any ways. Although it is said that this rash is resistant to the prescription stuff, so I may have to do all natural things. Either way this will be a long battle, one I most certainly did not sign up for. It's one of those situations of what do you do :first. Oh, I know...cry :-) Well things got even better today. Oh, yes they did. Don't believe me? This is what went on:

Today is soccer day. Not only soccer day, but also picture day. I hate picture day. It's when all the players have to get individual and team shots. I have to say it was less stressful this time around as the timing worked out better, but I still hate the back and forth and trying to find everyone. So we are about to dig into some really yummy food as we are watching Flannery's game. Up walk the older two girls with a couple of their friends and a cat. A stray cat. It was thin, but otherwise looked in decent shape. I told them to get rid of it. Instead they decided to feed it. From their hands. Anyone want to guess what happened? Hmmm, yeah, one of them got bit. Not a scratch, but a puncture. Now, some may know, as it isn't a secret on the blog that we do not vaccinate. However there are two vaccinations/shots that I would consider. Tetanus, and rabies treatments. If something happens here, on our 'farm' I don't worry about it too much as I know our animals and our land. We just make sure we do lots of washing and keeping things clean. But here we have a totally unknown animal, in unknown surroundings. Ugh. So I took this cat bitten child to urgent care, where she got a tetanus shot and a prescription for some antibiotics. We should be receiving a call from animal control to talk about the cat. We doubt very much that there is a scare for rabies, but it needs to be reported.

People, this isn't even remotely funny anymore. Someone stop the ride because I WANT OFF!!!! I know a lot of these things, in the grand scheme of things are trivial. They are. But when you're in the middle of it all, it really doesn't seem that way.

With all that is going on we have amazingly kept on track with schooling. And we've managed to work our way into the last stages of the GAPS diet. So there is progress. But when I look around me, and realize I'm going to have to vacuum every square inch of the rugs and furniture, every day for like one or two weeks. Well, if you saw the state of my house, you'd know why I feel like crying. What do I do with all of the stuff? Do I take care of that first, but risk others catching this? Do I push it all aside, but worry that we can be reinfested? Do I put it all in plastic bags (which will work, to kill things off, if they stay in the bag for 3 to 7 days....but what do we do if I end up needing some of it?). The list goes on. See? I cry.

On a positive note we've moved into the last stages of the GAPS diet. We probably moved a bit too quickly, but my sickness kind of prompted that. But I am going to say that our homemade salsa on our revised chicken salad tastes divine!!! The boys gobble it up, onions/peppers/tomatoes and all. They love it! Well off to try to regain something of our evening. The baby hasn't had a proper nap all day, so that is going to prove difficult. Thankfully dinner is in the crockpot.

OH WAIT!!! Duh! One more blessing to share (see it's been a long day!), Jeremiah and I celebrate 17 years of marriage today. Seventeen! Wow! The girls wanted to make us the key lime pie in the GAPS cookbook. However I didn't manage to get the ingredients for it. Bummer.

A post script: How entirely sad that when I went to do spell check that they flagged "marriage".

very, very sick

2011-09-29T13:27:00.000-07:00

Just like all things that have happened this year, it just gets better and better, well in our case, worse and worse. I was battling a sinus infection. It would get better, than worse, then better, then....well you get the idea. I finally found something online that seemed to be able to eradicate it. I started the protocol. In one day the ear pain and post nasal drip disappeared. It was a ten day treatment plan. However four days in was when I ate the egg whites. That was bad, really bad. It laid me flat for three days. In those three days I only took one or two pills a day instead of the 4 I was supposed to take. After the three days I was nauseous. I was assuming it was a left over effect of the egg white episode. Each day I was eating less and less, until the third day when I couldn't eat anything due to the very site or mention of food making me ill to my stomach. We had a theory of what was going on, but now, looking back I think it was just a coincidence. Basically my sinus infection got out of control. You have to understand that I don't get the typical sinus infection symptoms, which is why I didn't catch on to what was happening earlier. By now I am totally weak, my heart pounding with any movement, and a bunch of really odd sensations. Last night I figured out what was going on, not until I almost went to the ER. Yes, the ER at 2 AM. But there was a life saver sitting in our kitchen. Jeremiah has this powdered sports drink. I think of it as his fancy-dancy sports drink. Me being the very supportive helpmeet (cough, choke, sputter) that I am I questioned him as to why he needed such a fancy-dancy sports drink. I mean what did they use before sports drinks? Hmm, yeah, very supportive (rolling my eyes at myself!). Well, that sports drink saved my life. In all seriousness I don't recall having ever been sick to the point of thinking I was going to die. Last night, I seriously thought I was going to keel over. No I'm not being dramatic. It was very scary. I prayed, and soon after the thought of "electrolytes" popped into my head. I thought, how am I going to send Jeremiah to the store at 2 AM when I was seriously afraid I was going to keel over any moment? AHHH, the fancy-dancy sports drink. He got up to make me a quart of it. I sat in bed and took two big sips every 10 minutes. Drinking it all at once would have not given my body the time to absorb it, and also I was afraid of putting it in my tummy may make me vomit. It was one, VERY, VERY long hour. It took about an hour before I felt the change. I was able to fall asleep. I woke up about an hour or two later and did another round of the drink. It totally saved me from an ER trip. Don't get me wrong I would have gone had the drink not worked, but how in the world do we handle Jeremiah driving me to the ER, with kiddos at home at 2AM? Yeah, not a pretty thought. I wasn't the one to call the doctors this morning, but Jeremiah got him to send in a prescription without an appointment. It's only for amoxacillin. I am hoping that since I haven't had antibiotics in six years that this will work just fine. The sports drink is most certainly not on the diet. But it was that, or.....And taking a round of antibiotics is certainly not going to help with my gut. But there really wasn't any other options.

I am still very weak. I had a baked potato last night, again not on the diet, but, it really, really hit the spot. I didn't get sick on it either. For now, the diet is out for me (with in reason, I don't plan on eating cake or anything like that). I have a baby who still gets 90% of his food from me. I know my supply has gone down, and it's due to the illness, not the diet. But now my body is fighting to keep up my milk supply, which takes the nutrients from me, as I try to heal. So I have to find a way to get a bunch of food into me. I lost 4 pounds in four days. This is NOT good. It's going to take me a few days to regain my strength. Everyone else is still on the diet. We don't plan on abandoning it, but for me, temporarily I need to get food into me. And I seriously get very ill to my stomach with the mere site, smell or thought of chicken of beef. I'd go with a salad, but the fibre would be too much, and I need calories that a salad won't be able to provide. So far I've had a baked potato and some tomato soup. I've kept it down. I used some instant potatoes, and didn't feel too good afterwards. So I'll have to take the time to bake one the next time.

Things here have been a bit chaotic as you can imagine. Thankfully, after explaining to the girls how sick I am and that I really can't get up to do anything, they picked up the slack and took care of the things needing to be dealt with. I am hoping that by the weekend I will be well enough to get on with life.

Jed had his first speech therapy session. It went well. Jeremiah was able to take him, as I can't drive right now. The therapist said that he talked much better than what she was expecting. So I suppose that means he has made some progress over the summer. She would have gotten her information from his last therapist. We are in the process of finding a private therapist close to the girl's science class. That would save us from making two separate trips a week.

We have been able to keep up with schooling. I think we will only be behind on one reading, which can be done over the weekend. Jeremiah said he will do the younger girls' reading this evening. I can't read for long as I seriously get worn out from it. The older girls can do their own reading.

I am very grateful for Jeremiah's help during this time. He's had to do the cooking. He is really committed to this diet, and working hard to see that we succeed. I am very thankful for that. We went into stage 5 this week. With shopping day tomorrow we will try some more foods. When I get over this infection and off the antibiotics I will not redo intro, I plan on joining everyone on the full GAPS, which is where they should all be when I'm done with my meds.

Off to put a potato in the oven :-)

Just a quick post

2011-09-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

I've been missing in action for several reasons. Number 1: We've been sick, sick, AND sick. Number 2: Due to all the sickness we jumped right into the GAPS diet, we are now on day 5. We have had lots of small issues, and a bit of a biggie issue with one child. I actually started a new blog to write about our experience on the diet, just haven't gotten it up yet.

If anyone has been reading here long enough then you know this has been a trying year for us. Lots of big things happening (broken bones, appendicitis, surgery, etc.), and that we have been quite sick. It seems that a lot of our problem (the sickness at least) may be coming from black mold that we have in the house. Spraying it with a special solution, and putting borax down has really seemed to help everyone with their sickness. So I was breathing a sigh of relief that everyone's horrid ailments may be on the mend, and maybe, JUST maybe things might quiet down around here. Well, relatively speaking, because the whole die off effect from the diet really brings out the worst in everyone. So you can imagine my audible sigh when Flannery came up to me with some 'bug bites'. However most of them are all around her neck, hairline, and behind her ears. A few are on her torso, and one on her arm. I am even afraid to type out what it may be, but I will try.....chi....chi....chick....alright already! Chicken pox. Now I could be totally wrong. But most of my kids had a low grade fever and a sore throat, and doing this diet they should have been very, very hungry, BUT they weren't. All signs of the pox. Only time will tell. If it is the pox, I will be happy as that way I don't have to worry about what to do when they get to be teens. However, Moira is 12. I do believe that we actually gave Isabella the vaccine when she was two. But she's had some bumps over the past few days, that had blisters on them, but they were on her fingers. Who know at this point. But clearly suspicious.

Must go to bed and try to sleep. I don't relish the notion of 7 itchy bodies. I should know in day or two if it is, as they will have spread. I would say to pray that it's not the pox, but again I would rather they had natural immunity. So please pray that if it is that they all get a mild case, and we make it through with our sanity intact :-)

Weird stuff

2011-09-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

I have about three posts that have been in draft mode for the past couple of weeks. I wanted to upload some pictures to our computer and decided to put up a post. I decided to start with this draft as it was pretty weird stuff. After the weird stuff I pick up with the 'today' stuff.

Some weird things have been happening around here. I mean, weird. Like bats falling out of the sky and a sunfish hanging out on the ground, behind our van (still alive). Last week Isabella went out to do the evening milking. She started to pound on the window, telling us to get dad to get the bat that fell out of the sky. Bat? Oh, I know we have bats, I see them all the time flying in the evening sky. She was afraid that the chickens would think the bat was food. I told her to stay far away. Jeremiah went out there to scope out the situation. He decided to get the bat into a bucket. It was moving a bit, so he knew it wasn't dead. Imagine his surprise when the batS started flying around under the bucket. He managed to get the bucket up with a screen for a lid. Two bats. We kept them until the next day, when they were almost half drowned, since it rained in the middle of the night. Jeremiah let them go in the woods. I think they climbed up one of our trees. Very interesting indeed!

Yesterday Jeremiah went outside to get some stuff from the van. We hadn't brought in all our stuff from Isabella's pool party the night before as we were so tired. He comes in the house saying there is a sunfish, still alive, on the ground behind our van! A fish? Seriously? My guess is that a heron was flying by with it in it's mouth and dropped it, or a cat decided to leave us a present. It was a large fish though. He put it in a bucket of water, and walked down to our neighboors pond to let it go.

I told you it was weird. Not only have we had weird stuff, but a bunch of other unpleasant things have been happening around. I was in a really, really bad funk yesterday because of it all. It's a culmination of things really, not any one incident. The biggest bummer is that my Mom will be leaving us tomorrow. It has been wonderful to have her here. I guess things really got to me when the baby woke up the night before. It was about bed time for me anyways, so I figured I'd go in to nurse him, but had to brush my teeth first. I asked my Mom if she could rock the baby until I was ready, otherwise he would cry. Not that crying is horrible, but I've had too many experiences of him waking up too much from the crying that he won't go back to sleep for some two hours later. So she started rocking him. She decided to continue to rock him after I got into bed. I guess it hit me hard seeing her rocking him and singing to him quietly, knowing that she wouldn't get to do this again for him (well, once she leaves). So I was depressed about my Mom leaving. On top of it all we've been sick. A tummy bug hit half the household. A really, REALLY bad tummy bug. Like 5 days long tummy bug. Oh, and the van door decided to break and our oven doesn't work right now (the range top still works) and there was something else, but I can't remember right now. I've decided to find a cave and hole up there until this storm passes. Ugh.

Finding a cave would mean driving, of which is pretty difficult for me to do at the present moment. So I'm stuck here, in all this mess (for once not a true actual mess!). I really don't like dreading a new day, wondering what mess awaits for me. We have seriously only had a total of four weeks of no 'stuff' ALL this year. We are only a day away from September. That means a whole long nine months of junk (with the exception of the birth of the baby :-)), leaving us with still three months to go. Three months is a long time for more junk to happen. Ok, enough junky stuff.

We started school yesterday. It's almost 2 o'clock the next day and we haven't started school yet. That is the freedom of homeschooling. I have been up very early with a fussy baby for days now so I went back to bed when he went down for his morning nap. Ah, I feel better. I'll have to write about our schooling and get some pictures. I can say this though. I'm loving the reading, but the girls were starting to think they were going to die of hard work with all the paying attention and thinking they had to do. Ha! I'm so very glad we started up some reading and math a month ago. Otherwise I am sure their wee brains would have burst on the first day of school!! Well, at least they would have thought so.

Here are some pictures from the past month:

I know they look dead, but they were very much alive! Bats, in one of our 5 gallon buckets. One such bucket is now only outside worthy. The first time we used it we put a huge black snake in it, to relocate it. Black snakes are great to have around, unless of course they get big enough to eat your chicken eggs. I have this "thing" about reusing any implement that was used for outside purposes. I suppose you would too if you have seen our outside!! Ew!

All in the name of science. Here Jeremiah donned some work gloves to pick up one of the bats. I had all the kids *inside* incase one of them escaped.

Isabella's birthday dinner. She requested chicken alfredo. My mom said that Sam's Club had a great alfredo, and she was right :-) Yum! We made sure to have plenty of the red stuff (cranberry sauce) on hand.

The birthday girl showing off her new set of earrings and neclace.

Me, um making a funny face about my picture being taken during dinner :-)

I'm sure you can all guess what this is! Isabella's favorite color...orange.

Some of us were rather excited to dig into the cake!

It's the Squish Miester.

The boys at Bella's pool party. We had a cook out afterwards.

It was too hot to decorate the cake ahead of time, as the frosting would have melted. So everyone there got a chance to help with the cake decorating. That is one decked out cake!!

Some random pictures around the house. The kids love to pull the baby around in made up "carraiges". Here they even outfitted the baby with some music. Well, in this shot he just has on some earphones. But they have put their MP3 players on for him to listen to. He really enjoys that. As a wee babe, one of the ways we would be able to calm him down during a car ride was for him to listen to music on an MP3 player (our van radio doesn't work).

Jonah, our resident ham.

He's also our resident super hero!

Look who's pulling himself up to standing! He can now crawl properly. This of course opens a new chapter in our lives.....baby control! He climbs up on the tread mill, and pulls up on everything!! But he hasn't learned to hold on. That combo is really *bad*. Poor baby has a few red marks to show for it.

Regardless, he's pretty happy with his new view point on life :-)

Toofers, b-days and more

2011-08-19T20:12:00.000-07:00

I'm terribly behind in writing down some of the things that go on around here. I felt bad that we weren't able to get a birthday sign done for Isabella. It's been a tradition here for the past 6 years. She didn't seem to notice to much since she's been totally absorbed in her pool party details. For her birthday she chose to have a large pool party. It should prove to be fun. I am praying for good weather and sanity. After the pool we have to get everyone over to the park for some food and cake. I really don't relish the idea of trying to get a bunch of kids out of a pool, clothed and moved to another spot. Especially since I'm still gimpy :-) Seeing as how most of the kids she invited were her age, we shouldn't have too much of a problem. I am hoping that we remember to take pictures, but trying to keep an eye on so many kiddos may mean otherwise.

Baby Aubrey finally got his first tooth!! He has not been sleeping well for the last week or so and we finally know why. I am just so thankful for being able to get some nap time in since my mom is here. Aubrey was waking at 2 or 4 AM and staying up for two hours. Then come the early morning hours and he just wanted to nurse and nurse and nurse and....Since it isn't easy, nor comfortable to lay on my side, due to my leg, I can't sleep while I'm nursing him like I would normally do. We just went online to order an amber teething necklace. It took the baby forever to fall asleep tonight, and it was clear that he was in pain. We only had a wee bit of baby Tylenol to give him. I figured this way we don't have to worry about running out of pain meds, as the teething necklace is supposed to release a natural oil that helps with pain. Hey, I'm gain for new ideas :-)

I start physical therapy next week. I've been told I need to get off the crutches. So I try to walk around with one crutch only using it when my leg feels like it's going to give out. I can already tell that it's getting stronger compared to three days ago. This 'stronger' is only relative of course as my leg is in pretty sad shape. I'm allowed to take off the brace for bed time and if I'm just hanging out on the couch. What a wonderful break from the brace! I've started to try to make small movements. I can only bend my knee like a few inches. Wow, it's amazing how quickly your joints can lock up!

I've been preparing for the new school year. I have a ways to go before we will be all ready, but I may start them this coming Monday. It's hard to say. We still have our summer reading that we haven't finished ( a few more chapters left). And I plan on putting Isabella, Flannery and Moira on the GAPS intro diet on Monday. It might seem odd that Jed isn't included, but this is for many reasons. Isabella is going on it to see if we can't make a big change in her hernia situation. With four months till the end of the year, we need to make some big changes to see if we can avoid surgery. For Flannery, she NEEDS to be on this as there is a big, BIG correlation with her diet and her 'splinters'. She's been on a much restricted diet for the past week and only once did she complain of some pain, and that lasted only a few minutes. But, she had birthday cake for Isa's birthday....Oh...MY...GOODNESS!! Yeah, she claims that she isn't better at all, that she has been in pain all week long and just hasn't told us. If you knew, and saw Flannery during these episodes you KNOW that isn't true. This child can not hold back from freaking out over every little thing. I'd give some examples to show how totally out of control this is, but I dont' have the time to do so right now. Trust me, this is crazy! Moira is joining them only because she has been begging me to start the GAPS diet and when she heard that those two were going on it she asked to go on it too. Since my mom will have to help with the cooking, I didn't want to add anyone else on the list. Once I am better (up and doing all the cooking, etc.) I will put everyone on the diet. So with a new diet and starting the new school year on the same day...hmm, yeah crazy, school should wait till the following week.

All right, it's getting late and I need to get some sleep before the baby wakes to spend the rest of the night restless.

Jed's GI appointment

2011-08-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

It has been a whole year since we last visited the GI office. I am pleased to say that it went better than I had hoped. I was dreading this visit. A lot. I was even thinking of cancelling it. My main concern was that they would suggest that we put Jed's tube back in. I *know* the progress that Jed has made this past year. He's made great strides in many problem areas. This is great and wonderful. I was hoping that GI was going to see these gains. Thankfully they did. Unfortunately the great golden goblet named "weight and height gain", was not found at this appointment. As I surmised, Jed, although he has grown and gained weight, has fallen more from the main curve. I was so nervous, waiting for his doctor to tell me his thoughts on the matter. I was relieved to be told that they want him to be 'normal', and that there is no talk of reinserting the tube. They brought the nutritionist in for a consultation, and asked if we could have Jed's blood drawn. Jed was such a trooper. I told him ahead of time what to expect. I told him that he couldn't move his arm. That boy was very brave. He sat stock still! He whimpered a bit and said it hurt, but he just sat there watching vial after vial drawn. He was proud to show off his Bugs Bunny bandaid :-) To cement the matter that GI is not concerned about Jed, we don't have to be back until next summer! Phew! I am so glad it is over and it went better than expected.

It seemed that only my mom and I were worn out by the long day :-) Everyone else had way too much energy! I tried to catch a cat nap on the couch while the baby napped. Ha, funny! Oh well. It is later than I was hoping to get into bed. I keep saying how I'm going to go to bed early each night, but somehow it never happens. Maybe tomorrow....

Ugh

2011-08-07T17:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I was going to upload some pictures I took yesterday. But I had a sick feeling in my tummy when my Mom picked up my camera's card reader off the floor. Turns out that one of the boys, probably Jonah, got a hold of it and bent the tines, making it unusable. That is the second one we bought in the past few months. My camera's ability to download them directly is broken, and would cost a pretty penny to fix. These card readers are relatively cheap, but they won't be if we have to buy a new one every month or two!

Now Isabella just came up to the back window to ask for honey. Honey? Yes, apparently now we have a chicken with it's insides coming out. Hey, I don't make this stuff up. The remedy is to coat it with honey for it to reduce swelling. Jeremiah and the older three girls are out there taking the bandages off the chickens' feet, from the bumblefoot that they, *hopefully*, HAD. Past tense, past tense. Is it only me that sees that something new and dreadful has been happening to us, every week, if not daily, since the beginning of this year? I mean, really now. Every time I think we've got a "bandaid" on one situation, another situation pops right up to take its place! Deep breath in, deep breath out....repeat :-)

I'm trying not to go crazy. Not being able to get up and help is a real bummer. The good news is that I was able to make it to church today. It's now evening and it's apparent that the outing aggravated my knee. Nothing that a couple of Advil won't 'fix'. I'm just wondering how this is going to work for Jed's appointment this Wednesday. I decided not to cancel his appointment. It may be beneficial that my Mom is with us to give an eye witness account of how much Jed does indeed eat. I have a feeling that the GI doc is not going to be really happy with Jed's progress. I could be wrong, I hope I'm wrong. GI wanted me to add powdered milk to most of Jed's foods to increase the caloric value of what he was eating. The problem is....powdered milk is exceedingly bad for you. I really can't see how pumping bad stuff into him on a daily basis is going to help him in the long run. It was good to hear that my brother was very small for his age, but that he caught up in his teen years. He's now 6 foot (at least). My brother had a bunch of neurological issues as well. I do know that Jed looked just like my brother. I am hoping that GI will see that we have Jed's best interest at heart and that the things we do for him have been researched by us. Please pray that his appointment goes well. The last time they saw him was last August. I feel a lot has changed in the past year, I pray that they will see the changes as well.

So, no pictures for a while. Not until we get a new card reader.

bumblefoot

2011-08-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

Bumblefoot, it almost sounds like a silly name for a chicken. However it's the illness that almost a dozen of our chickens are fighting right now. Ya just gotta love all the 'learning as we go' that goes on around here. I think I mentioned yesterday that we lost a chicken to 'something'. Well, come to find out that a bunch of our chickens have that 'something'. I got on to the backyard chickens forum. The consensus was that our chickies have bumblefoot. Bf (bumblefoot) is a staph infection in the chicken's foot. You will notice a swelling at the top of the foot, if it has had time to grow. Otherwise you see a black scab on the bottom of their foot. With lots of soaking, cleaning and some minor surgery they should be on the mend. Jeremiah and the girls took care of the large task this evening. We will check in on everyone tomorrow to see how they are faring. I am hypothesizing that the infection started with our new chicken roost's roof. The staph gains it's entrance by a scratch or cut in their foot. I really couldn't believe almost half of our chickens all came down with this. On the chicken forum people were saying that if you live in a wooded area that would lend itself to the chickens getting cuts and hence, bumblefoot. We have had chickens here for the past three summers and none of them came down with this before. We bought a metal roof to go on top of our newly built chicken nests/roosts. However it had very sharp edges. Jeremiah had it laying against our fence, and I am guessing that some of the chickens tried to roost on it, thus cutting their feet. I am hoping that is the case. I really can't imagine having to go through this all over again. Who knew all that went into chickens!

Baby continues to do better. He's a ball full of energy. He is trying to get up on his knees! Where did my wee little baby go? Ha! He is very, very interested in the food we are eating. He's only had wee little tastes of soft things that we eat. But he is hooked :-)

Poor Jed wasn't feeling well to his tummy this morning. I have been making sure to only be online first thing in the morning, and then after the kids are in bed. However we forgot to take off the wireless yesterday. So it was no surprise that Jed was sick to his tummy today. Once I turned the wireless off he was feeling better a couple of hours later. He has an appointment with GI next week. This is the appointment I've been nervous about. However, at this point I don't think he'll be able to go. My mom could drive us, but it's a lot of walking and I really can't see that happening right now with my knee. I think I will have to reschedule. Isabella has an appointment the following week with GI, and that may have to be cancelled as well.

Tomorrow is a new day. I pray that it will be a blessing to all.

Baby boy update and more

2011-08-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

I am very happy to report that baby Aubrey is feeling much better. Even more so since we bought some Desitin. Let's just say that the antibiotics are not being kind to his gut. Besides sleeping a lot more than usual, he has been acting his normal, happy, inquisitive self. For that I am very grateful!!

Unfortunately now that he's feeling better we actually had a chicken become sick looking. My Mom took Isabella and Jonah with her to the Tractor and Supply store to get some powdered antibiotics. We gave it to the chickens. However I was doubting if she was drinking much, so I asked Jeremiah to give her the injectable antibiotic. Not one minute later the poor chicken was dead! Oh, how sad. It was Saoirse's chicken, named Honey-Bear. Not being sure what she died of we will have to watch the rest of the flock closely. I am hoping it is something on the simple side, like the heat got the best of her? But her comb was turning purple, more and more as the day progressed, meaning a lack of oxygen. Not sure what to make of it.

I wrote up a bit of a routine, a very, very loose one. The kiddo's really do much better with some direction. I'll admit that they have been watching way too many movies/cartoons. This really has to stop. So I've outlined the following 'routine' ( I type this out here so that I have a copy of it as well, paper copies have a way of disappearing):

8:00--get up
tidy bedrooms
put a load of laundry in
milk goats/feed dogs (Isabella)
play outside
wash up and get dressed in clean clothes

10:00--breakfast
room tidy up (assigned rooms)
girls take turns helping boys clean up their room
reboot laundry

11:30--school time:
Math -Saoirse with me
           Isabella and Flannery with DVD math
           Moira with the boys
Reading/Phonics/Spelling-Saoirse with me
           Flannery next, with me
           Moira on Math
           Isabella with boys
Spelling/Handwriting-spelling with Isa and Moira
           Handwriting for Saoirse and Flan
            Isa and Moira journaling
Science/Nature Study--2-3 times a week with all girls

2:00--quick tidy, clean up school things
have snack/light lunch
reboot laundry

3:00--free time

5:00--help with dinner
put last load of laundry into drier (no more wash)

6:00--History with Dad

6:30--dinner

7:30--dinner clean up
put laundry away
room tidy
milk goats
family worship
games/reading

9:00--bed time

That is it in a nut shell. Seems all nice and 'pretty' on paper :-) Ha, ha! Today I had the girls clean up the bedrooms, which will make 'tidying' them up much easier. I am hoping that this will help us regain some normalcy. Today has been two full weeks since my fall. The good news is that I feel no pain as long as I am hanging on the couch. I can now walk the length of the house (with crutches) with minimal pain, *but* after that the pain starts building and building. I can't be up more than 2 or 3 minutes before my knee is very much uncomfortably painful. Oy. I feel like a broken record....I guess I just need to be patient. I'm not seeing how this is going to turn into something I can walk on with out crutches before the 6 weeks is up. It just seems that this recovery thing is going ever so slowly. It seems that every two days or so I tweak my leg/knee. Nothing major, but I seem to take two steps forward and one step back. I am sure you are all getting bored of my knee talk by now! Sorry about that.

Not much else going on...and I would really like to keep it that way!

Prayers are good...very good

2011-07-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

Prayers for my sanity. I feel like there is nothing we can do and come out on top. I know that this feeling is only a feeling, but it's pretty darn real :-) So the baby came down with a low grade fever yesterday. He was fussy, but no other noticeable symptoms. Today his fever got very high, and his right eye was a bit pink. I really could not handle all of this, so Jeremiah took him to the urgent care. It appears that he has a throat infection of some sort and a low grade ear infection. This is concerning only because Flannery has been starting to show signs of 'purging' her underlying problem (presumed to be strep). The baby will be covered with the antibiotics they prescribed to him. I will say that if anyone else comes down with an infection this week I am going to give everyone antibiotics!! Seriously, I think I will cut my losses, use the drugs and regroup later.

I am discouraged and unsure. I know that there will be phases in life that are just busier, harder, more work than others, and apparently we are in one of them. How wonderful it was to have received the newest copy of Above Rubies in the mail this afternoon. It brought great nuggets of truth from God's word.

It's getting late, I need to get ready for bed. I am praying that the baby will have a good nights sleep tonight. And praying that the rest of us stay well.