Friday, November 13

This morning I got Melissa off to school. Ben came down around the same time as Melissa, so I gave him breakfast. Then he got his dinosaur coloring and activity book and asked me if I would color with him. So we sat at the table and colored two dinosaur pictures together, and played a few games of tic-tac-toe which he is surprisingly good at for a just-turned-four-year-old :)

I woke Alexa up early this morning, like a little after 8. I wanted to do schoolwork with her earlier in the morning as we had plans for later in the morning and I wanted school to be pretty much done before we left, rather than having a lot to do when we got back.

So I gave her breakfast and let her do art to begin with, which she always enjoys. Today was more drawing 3-D circular objects and practicing shading them and/or creating shadows for them. I took a shower while she did that and read a chapter of "Meet Josefina" for her silent reading time. We did a geography review next, and then I read her a chapter of Heidi. She did her Daily Journal entry which was brief; nothing much exciting happened yesterday, and we did a 6 Times Table review. Then she played with blocks with Ben until it was time to leave.

At 10:30 we left to go meet some other families from our homeschool group for a 911 tour. First we went into a big conference room where the supervisor met with us and spent a while talking to the kids about their 911 center and taking any questions they had. Then they brought us into the dispatch room, and into the equipment room, and showed the kids the computers and how they worked. They brought us outside into the parking lot where they had a police car and they let the kids see it inside and out, sit in the back seat if they wanted to, look in the trunk, see the equipment bag they carry around with them, see the lights, hear the sirens, answer more questions, etc. Then they brought us back into the first room where they wrapped up the talk and told the kids never to be afraid to call 911 if they were scared or felt something wasn't right and handed out coloring books and stuff like that.

We were there about an hour and a half total and afterward three of us moms took our kids and met up at Wendy's for lunch. We ate, came home and brought food back for Shawn, and then I took a ride over to the mall while he was eating as I needed to buy a baby shower gift for tomorrow. I also made a quick stop at the library to get a book they were holding for me. Alexa meanwhile played multiplication games on the computer as a review of the 2-6 tables and Ben colored in his new coloring book while Shawn ate his lunch.

Shortly after I got back, Alexa and Ben went out into the backyard, where they stayed for quite some time. At 5 a friend of hers knocked on the door looking for her and I sent him into the backyard to play with them, too. They stayed outside another hour and a half or so until we called them in for dinner. We kept dinner simple tonight, we made soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and sliced up some tomato; Ben also ate some raisins and pretzels, he was hungry tonight!

After dinner, the kids just played; Alexa and Ben had gotten a little scholastic audiobook disc in their kids' meals at Wendy's today, so at one point they went up to Ben's room together and listened to the CD on his radio and played in there. A little after 8, Shawn put Ben to bed, and then he and Alexa hung out together doing more work on his fish tank and basement organization while I went up and read in bed.

Incidentally, I'm noticing this week that schoolwork in general is taking us between 2 and 3 hours a day, whereas in the beginning it was taking us between 3 and 4 hours a day. We aren't doing less work really (although there is the fact that this week grammar is just "review" and isn't really introducing anything new for language arts stuff, but still)- I think we have just settled into a good routine where she knows what she's supposed to do and we're both more comfortable with it and so she's spending much less time daydreaming and fidgeting and just gets done what she needs to get done. She's doing better doing things with a little less supervision, too, though she still likes me to be with her as much as possible while she works. Anyway, just something I noticed!

Thursday, November 12

This morning was Shawn's day to get up with Melissa, but I was up around the same time anyway- Ben woke me just before the alarm went off and I couldn't fall back asleep even though Shawn got up and took him downstairs. So after a while I just came down.

Nothing special going on in the morning, after a while Shawn went to Lowe's and said he'd bring back McDonald's for breakfast on his way home. I got Alexa up around the time he left, and we started school with her reading to me from "The Care & Keeping Of Your Emotions" for Health, reading the sections called "Understanding the Circle" and "Changing the Circle." We continued with reading as I read her a chapter of "Heidi" on the couch.

Next I gave her a quiz on spelling and she got all of them right. We followed that with math- a 6 Times Table multiplication game online, reviewing the 6 Times Tables out of order with flash cards, and another page similar to what we'd done yesterday, where she rounded to estimate the answers for various addition, subtraction and multiplication problems and then used a calculator to determine the actual answer, to see how close that was to her estimated answer.

She spent a few minutes playing with wooden building blocks with Ben, and then she did her Daily Journal entry. When she was finished with that, we did Science. For science, she noted today's weather conditions and wrote them down, and made herself a nutritious snack since we are beginning our unit on nutrition. She made a "caterpillar" out of sliced bananas put together with peanut butter and gave it raisin eyes and pretzel stick legs and antennae. She then ate her snack (and commented "I love science!").

She read a chapter of "Meet Josefina" for silent reading time and that was it for school- I let her play a computer game for a while, she watched some TV and just kind of did her own thing until a little after 3:30, when she went to her cousins' house to play with them after school. After a while they moved their play to outside, and she didn't come in until dinner was ready, a little after 6:30.

Today was supposed to be Girl Scouts but I was tired, showered, in my pajama pants before dinner and just didn't feel up to going out, so I just let her continue playing with friends and then eat dinner and then we relaxed at home. The kids had dessert, Shawn put Ben to bed, Alexa watched Survivor with us, and that was about it for today. More tomorrow!

Wednesday, November 11

This morning I got Melissa off to school, hung out with Ben in the morning, and got Alexa up a little before 10. I gave Alexa and Ben breakfast and then sat down at the table to do schoolwork with Alexa at 10:26, letting Ben sit with us too and play with his dinosaur stamp kit and crayons.

First Alexa and I did a geography review, going over the states and capitals learned so far. Next, she finished writing her social studies report on the Lenape Indians and read her four page report aloud to me. She did a spelling review, writing her words in alphabetical order. She wrote in her Daily Journal. She did art, which was drawing little 3-D pails using the techniques she'd learned earlier in the week, and then practicing shading them and creating shadows.

She did math- we reviewed the 6 Times Tables out of order, she played a 6 Times Table game on the computer, we talked more about rounding numbers and estimating, and then I gave her a handful of problems (addition, subtraction and multiplication) and she had to round the numbers to estimate the answers, and then check the actual answers with a calculator to see how close the estimate was.

I read her a chapter of Heidi (it was a long chapter today) and finished that at 12:13. So the curriculum stuff took just under two hours today and yesterday. At this point, we had lunch and the kids got dressed and cleaned up. They went outside in the backyard to play for almost twenty minutes and then came in because their grandma had come over to make brownies with them to mail off to some of her female soldier penpals. While we did this, my mom also talked with Alexa about Veterans' Day and had Alexa make a little note/card on construction paper to send off with the brownies.

Once the brownies were done, I decided I'd make some more peanut butter cookies too (with jelly "thumbprints" this time instead of hershey's kisses in the center) so I did that while Alexa did some more work on the story she started writing a few days ago. I made several batches and we packed up a nice little care package with the cookies I'd made, some of the kids halloween candy, a box of tea, a book, and my mother put in her brownies and a couple of boxes of blank Christmas cards so that they could send cards to their families, and of course the card/note Alexa had made.

Around 4:30 or a little before, Alexa and Ben went into the backyard again with their cousins and friend and played outside for a couple of hours till well past dark. At that point they came in for dinner, and after dinner the girls disappeared upstairs to watch TV together.

Later, Shawn and I were watching a show on the couch and Alexa came down and finished watching it with us. Then I talked with her about the thing that had scared her last night- she'd been crying about a commercial she'd seen about an animal ripping off somebody's face and she was so scared that she'd slept on our floor- well today I figured out what it was about when I saw a news thing online. Apparently she'd seen a segment about the woman who was attacked by a friend's 200 lb chimpanzee nine months ago. She thought she was seeing some sort of scary movie commercial. I explained to her what had happened- that it was a real story about a big chimpanzee that should have been a wild animal rather than a pet and that sometimes wild animals are unpredictable, especially if they feel threatened or scared, and that it did attack her and that it did badly damage her face. But I explained, it happened nearly a year ago, nowhere near us, the animal is dead, and the woman is alive, and that none of it had anything to do with Alexa. So that while it was a horrible thing that happened, it wasn't going to happen to HER and shouldn't make her afraid to sleep at night.

She actually seemed to feel much better after talking about it and did end up sleeping just fine in her own room tonight.

That was really about it for today, more tomorrow!

Tuesday, November 10

Today was Shawn's day to get up with Melissa and get her off to school. Usually I'm up within a half hour of him even on my day to "sleep late" but today I woke up, looked at the clock, and saw it was 9:30. I couldn't believe it! I went and woke Alexa up and then joined Shawn and Ben downstairs, had some coffee, checked my email, started some laundry and stuff like that.

I gave Alexa breakfast and a short while later, we were ready to start school. I don't usually keep track of how much time we spend on actually doing schoolwork but once in a while I like to, to get an idea of where things stand with how long a day we're actually spending on it, so today I kept track of time.

We started schoolwork at 10:37. Alexa did her Daily Journal first, writing (in cursive) a couple of lines about the weekend and then writing about yesterday and her visit to the ENT. She spent 17 minutes on her journal. If she had illustrated it, it would have taken longer, but she hasn't been choosing to illustrate her entries very often anymore. Next we did a spelling review, which took only 4 minutes. She looked at each word and spelled it aloud, then closed her eyes, pictured the word in bright blazing colors and spelled it again with her eyes closed.

We then moved right into math (and geography, as it turned out). For math we reviewed more information on rounding and estimating and orally did some rounding problems- yesterday we'd done the same with tens, today we did hundreds. There was no written math today. We reviewed the 6 Times Tables out of order, then went to the computer so she could choose a multiplication game to play level 6 on. As it turned out, my computer was freezing up and we had to reboot it, so while we waited for it to reboot, we did a quick geography review of all the states and capitals learned so far (up through Nebraska in alphabetical order). When the computer was ready, she played her level 6 Times Table game. At the end, she got to decorate a gingerbread house and yard so she took a bit of time with that, and as in the end, that math and geography took 28 minutes.

Next we moved right into health. She read aloud to me from "The Care & Keeping Of You, The Body Book For Girls." She read me the sections on food and nutrition, which was cool because we just started moving into that section in science. That took 11 minutes. From there we did science. For science, we read a page about "the cell, some facts and definitions." It talked about how the body of every person begins as one fertilized egg cell which grows by cell division and how each grows into the many different kinds of cells a body needs- and it showed a picture of a cell, labeling the cell membrane, cytoplasm and nucleus. And then to tie it into our unit on plants and seeds, it had her copy the cell drawing into her book, label it, and then compare it with the drawing she'd made of the inside of a peanut a few lessons back, and described how the cell membrane is like the skin of the peanut, how the cytoplasm is like the nutmeat, and how the nucleus is like the germ of the nut. So it tied everything in nicely, and she copied the two sketches and labeled them and jotted down the comparisons in her book. This took 22 minutes.

I read her a chapter of "Heidi" (13 minutes), and she did Music- reading a mini bio on Antonin Dvorak and listening to his New World Symphony - 4th movement on Youtube (17 minutes). And at this point we broke for lunch (at 12:55) and "recess." None of that ten/fifteen minute recess nonsense like the kids are stuck with in school- we had our lunch and then she and her brother went and played with bubbles and balls and whatnot in the backyard for nearly an hour. :)

When they came back in, I told Alexa the only thing she had left for school today was silent reading. She chose another American Girl book (Meet Josefina I believe) and took it upstairs. I told her to read at least a chapter, and that if she wanted to read more she could, to just come down whenever she was ready. She must have read more than a chapter as she stayed up there for a while. When she came down, she helped me fold and put away laundry, at which point I glanced at the clock and realized it was already 2:45! I hadn't kept track of what time she came downstairs but she went up at around ten minutes to two and between reading and laundry, an hour went by.

Anyway, at that point she told me she wanted to write a poem and asked if she could type it on the computer. I said yes, but first I had her respond to an email she'd received from a female soldier. My mother, Alexa's grandmother, is big into troop support and has quite a few deployed soldiers she corresponds with regularly and sends care packages to. One is a female soldier who is in a group of eight female soldiers and recently we had passed along a batch of our peanut butter chocolate kiss blossom cookies for my mom to mail out to them. She had given them my email address and mentioned that Alexa might get a kick out of hearing from a female soldier. So the one that my mother corresponds with had emailed Alexa and thanked her for the cookies etc. So Alexa wrote back saying you're welcome and that we would make more, and that she was going to be making brownies with her grandmother in a few days etc.

She asked me if it was okay to ask the soldier a few questions and I said sure, so Alexa asked her if she has kids and how old they are, and if she likes it where she is, and if she misses her family.

When she was done with the email I told her she could write her poem, although by then she'd decided she would rather write a story instead. So she began her story and spent a while composing and typing the first few paragraphs. I'm thinking I should really look into finding some sort of online kids' typing program where she can learn to type properly being as she is getting to an age where she wants to type stories and emails and poems and things like that on the computer, I'm just not sure if she's too young for that or if it will add too much on to our day or how often she'd need to do it etc, but I'm going to look into it!

Anyway, other than that a wobbly microwave cart that should have been fixed forever ago finally collapsed and we had a mess on our hands, including at least one broken glass bottle that had been in the cart and a good sized ceramic pig that I've had for probably fifteen years finally bit the dust so we had some cleaning on our hands. Fortunately the microwave itself didn't break, and even more fortunately it didn't fall into the glass fish tank which was actually a pretty near miss. At least we cleaned out the cart- and Shawn finally took it downstairs and fixed it :)

Other than that, we decided to drive up the road to a local chinese place and eat dinner there- it was only a minute away and that would mean no cleanup required, nice and easy! So we did that, came home, the kids played and watched TV a bit and Alexa and Ben did some coloring and cutting in the kitchen- they each made me some very nice pictures, Ben practicing his circles and Alexa putting her newfound art skills to use. She'd been learning about making ovals with curved or straight parallel lines to make 3D images such as tables, vases, bottles, plates, bowls, garbage cans and things like that, and she'd been drawing them in her art book earlier in the week. So today she made a table using those skills, cut it out, and then made little plates of food and cups and a vase with flowers etc all using the same skills and taped those onto the table to look like a set table- it was very cute! I told her it came out great and that I was going to put it into her art book!

After a while, the kids went up to bed. Shawn and I watched some TV and then I went to bed and read awhile (I jumped on the Twilight bandwagon finally and started reading Melissa's "Twilight" book, staying up later than I should have!

It was around midnight or a bit after when I finally turned out the light and started trying to fall asleep. I heard Alexa come down and go to the bathroom and go back up. Five minutes later she came down again and I heard her talking to her dad in his computer room and I heard her start crying and saying she was scared. He talked to her for a few minutes and told her to relax and let her stay with him a few minutes til she'd calmed down. Then I heard her say "okay" and start coming down the hall and I heard her say "I love you" and she sounded pretty calm and she went upstairs. But two or three minutes later she came down again, and I intercepted her and called her into the bedroom and asked her what was wrong, and she burst into hysterical tears again and started saying she was scared and she didn't want to be in her room and she wanted to sleep with us and it felt like something was in the room with her and that she'd seen a scary commercial the other night where an animal ripped a woman's face off (!!!) and she was really upset.

I had no idea what "commercial" she was talking about. She does have a TV in her room which she's allowed to watch a little bit before bed most nights, she's had it in there for almost a year now, since the holidays last year, but we have censors on where she can't watch anything that isn't PG, etc. We asked what she had been watching and she said "18 Kids And Counting"- I told her shows like on the Discovery Channel and TLC were often good shows but that not all of them were appropriate for her to watch on her own and that she was only allowed to watch the kids channels at night; that if she wanted to see those shows she had to ask us. I said that she'd probably seen a commercial for one of those "I Survived" type shows where someone survived an animal attack and we got her calmed down again and then told her she could bring her blankets and pillows into our room and sleep on the floor, which she did.

What a night! More tomorrow!

Monday, November 9

This morning I got up and got Melissa off to school. Ben got up at the same time so I gave him breakfast. Around 9:30 or a little before I got Alexa up and fed, and then I had her do art. For art we read about "foreshortening"- making elongated circles (ovals) and then using straight or curved parallel lines and a curved line at the bottom to create 3D objects such as a can of cat food, a bowl, a plate, a table, a stool, a hat, a bottle, a trash can and things like that. It showed her how in the book and after reading about it to her and watching her do the first few objects, I left her to finish up while I took a shower.

After I was ready and had Ben ready etc, we all got in the car and went to Walmart where Ben had an appointment to get his four year/preschool pictures taken. I don't know what got into him today but he was quite a handful! He just wanted to run around and act wild, he didn't want to sit still for the pictures, he would either refuse to smile or paste a big cheesy obviously posed smile onto his face (which was sort of cute but not what I wanted for the pictures) and then try to wiggle down after every one saying "we're done"- I had to bribe him with a slushie from the Subway that was in the Walmart and even then it was tough, but we eventually got a few reasonably good poses, all things considered!

We got the kids each a slushie and then walked around Walmart for a bit getting some things I needed. When we left Walmart, Shawn had to stop in at Home Depot, so the kids and I waited in the car for a few minutes. We got home and put our groceries away, Shawn made us some sandwiches while I was doing that, and then Alexa and I had to grab our sandwiches and run and eat them in the car as we were heading out for Alexa's appointment with the ENT.

Alexa was going to the ENT because she had failed two hearing tests at the pediatrician's office. One a year ago and one this October. The first time they'd said it was possibly due to a lot of wax buildup. This time they said nothing about wax buildup but said that one ear had gotten a bit better and one had gotten worse- either way, she still failed. So they referred her to the ENT.

The ENT did a much more thorough testing. First the doctor looked in her ears and said they were clear- no fluid, no wax buildup etc. He did a hearing test with the machine like they use at the pediatrician's office. Then we went into this sound booth where Alexa put headphones on and the lady went into a booth opposite where she could see Alexa through a glass window. She could talk and Alexa would hear her in the headphones, and there was a microphone in our booth so Alexa could talk and the lady would hear her. She did several tests. The first involved repeating a bunch of different words the lady said. The next involved wearing big headphones and raising her hand when she heard a tone.

After that the lady came in to switch her to much smaller earphones and said they were going to do the same test, but doing each ear separately now instead of both together, and she cautioned Alexa only to raise her hand when she heard the tone... she said that she'd noticed that earlier Alexa was raising her hand every time the lady looked at her- even if there was no tone. So apparently Alexa thought the look meant "hey you were supposed to hear something" and so Alexa raised her hand even though she hadn't heard anything. So the lady had to tell her that just because she looked at her, that didn't mean anything :)

Anyway, she finished up the testing, and then the doctor came in to talk to us. He said that her ears actually weren't so bad at all. He said there was some high pitch hearing loss but that it was only slightly below normal, and that we should just make sure that Alexa did not listen to her music or TV too loud, and that if she was going to be hanging out with her dad when he was using noisy tools, she should use earplugs. He said to continue getting her tested yearly but that there is really nothing to worry about as of now. So that was a relief!

When we got home, it was already nearly 3 PM and I told Alexa it was time to sit down and finish up her schoolwork since we'd only done art so far today. We did about two hours of schoolwork. First she wrote some more for her Social Studies report on the Lenape Indians. Next she played a 6 Times Table game on the computer, and we reviewed the 6 Times Tables out of order. There was no written math, we just read a page and orally did some review of estimating/rounding numbers to the nearest ten.

After math, we did a spelling review- I'd given her ten new spelling words and we took turns writing them with our fingers on each others' backs and trying to guess which words they were. We did a brief grammar review, briefly going over conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns again.

We did geography- we reviewed all states learned so far, added "Nebraska" and reviewed that one, including reading about it in "Exploring The 50 States" and "The State Sticker Book." We also played a game where we tried to locate all the states learned so far on our map, seeing who could find them the fastest.

We sat on the couch and I read a chapter of "Heidi" to her, and then we stopped. It was nearly a quarter to 5 and I knew we only had maybe a half hour of light left. I told Alexa I wanted her to go in the backyard and run around with Ben a bit before it got dark, I figured each of them could use a little playtime/fresh air. Shawn went out for a bit with them too and kicked the ball around with them, then he came in and they continued to play in the yard. Their cousins came over too and we turned the outside light on and let them play til past dark. They were out for about an hour when we called them in for dinner.

All that was left on the "to do list" for school at that point was Daily Journal and silent reading. We never did get around to it though and I figured she could just add in a line about the weekend when she writes her entry about today. So that was really it, nothing else of note over the rest of the evening. More tomorrow!

Sunday, November 8

Brief entry today- this morning was spent just sort of lounging around and doing our own thing. Early afternoon, I was in the process of sending Alexa and Ben out in the backyard as it was very nice out and he wanted to play outside. One of her friends had come over and was going to play outside with them, and her cousins were on their way over to play too, when all of a sudden the kids started getting all excited- over the fence they'd seen a helicopter land over by the park and field behind our house.

So after getting my shoes on, I decided I'd walk over there with them to check it out. My nephews and the boy who lives up the street got permission to come with us, and we walked over. Other people were gathered, and there was a Med-Evac helicopter and some fire trucks and we saw them load someone on a stretcher into the helicopter and then watched the helicopter take off. I had to have a brief talk with Alexa- when she first got to the area we watched the helicopter from, a bit ahead of me as I was walking with Ben who isn't as fast, I saw her doing a little cheer and giving her friend and cousin a high-five- because she was excited about getting there and seeing the helicopter. Being as a bunch of other people were standing around, that was a little embarrassing for me! So I explained to her that the helicopter was there because someone was sick or hurt and had to be taken to a hospital and that it was okay to watch and be interested, but not to jump around cheering or giving high fives and acting happy about it!

Anyway, the kids asked if they could stay and play at the park for a while, and I said yes as it was unbelievably warm and sunny out for November! So I let them all play. After a while, I got Shawn to make he and I some sandwiches and bring them to the park as he and I had not even had breakfast yet and here it was nearly lunch time already. So he and I sat on a bench and had a little picnic lunch while the kids continued to play.

After a while, about 12:45, we walked home. I told Alexa's friend and cousins to go home and eat lunch and that they could come back over and play in our backyard when they were done. I fed my kids lunch, and then everyone met back up in the backyard where they proceeded to play for several hours.

Meanwhile, Shawn went to the store to get stuff to make meatballs and sausage and pasta for dinner. We were supposed to have company over today, his friend and his wife and their kids. After Shawn got back with the groceries, I was commenting that we had to straighten up and how I was kinda tired and not all that much in the mood to start cleaning for company, and he said "Well you may not have to worry about it." As it turned out, the guy sent Shawn a text saying something like "Oh, I figured I should let you know my kids are sick." Uh.... yeah. I don't know why they didn't let us know earlier in the day BEFORE we went shopping for enough food to feed a whole other family but oh well! I was kind of glad to not have to entertain anyway!

Shawn sent him a message back that we'll reschedule for next week, and we went about making dinner for ourselves. We called the kids in when it was after dark and dinner was ready, and we ate (it was very good!), and shortly afterward we convinced Shawn to light a fire in our little firepit and we sat outside around the fire and roasted marshmallows under the stars, in the mild weather, which was very nice.

After dinner, we watched an episode of Planet Earth ("Shallow Seas Education") and that was about it, we got the kids to bed, I hung out with Shawn for a little while as he played a new video game, and then we went up to watch some TV ourselves. More tomorrow!

Saturday, November 7

Ben is four years old today! It's his birthday! I can't believe my last "baby" is four already- three still sounded a bit babyish but four sounds all little boy :) He was excited about it when he woke up. I tried to sing Happy Birthday to him but he wouldn't let me, kept saying "not yet," when we have cake. I told him we had cake at his party last weekend but he said he wanted a cake today, too, so I told him okay, we'd have a cake later :)

He and I spent some time together coloring and doing mazes and playing tic-tac-toe in his dinosaur coloring and activity book while we waited for his dad and sisters to come downstairs. Shawn made pancakes for everyone, making the kids specials with sprinkles and chocolate chips in the batter (I know, sounds healthy!) and making Ben's in the shape of a Mickey Mouse Head, which Ben gets a kick out of. We put a candle in Ben's pancake and sang Happy Birthday to him for fun, as we did with Alexa for her birthday breakfast.

After a while of the kids watching TV we sent them out into the backyard to play. One of Alexa's friends from the neighborhood went back there with them and we gave them all big tubes of bubbles to play with and they were occupied with them for quite a long time, blowing and catching and popping and watching the bubbles. A little later, Alexa and Ben's cousins ended up coming over too, so the five kids all had fun playing in the backyard. They stayed out there for hours. We ended up making them some sandwiches and letting them eat outside while they continued playing.

At one point Shawn kept an eye on them while I went to the supermarket for a few things we needed, including a small ice cream cake for Ben for after dinner. When I got back, I put things away- and the kids just continued to play. And play. And play. It might have been the longest they ever spent just being outside in our backyard; especially Ben! Reminded me of the days when I was a kid and it seemed like we all just went outside when we woke up and stopped in when we were hungry and came home when it got dark. He really had a great time and loved the fact that the older kids played with him and included him the whole time. That was probably the best possible way he could have spent his birthday!

Around 5, Shawn went out to grill for dinner. We had another kid in our backyard, another of Alexa's friends who'd come to play. It was getting dark already. But they kept playing til dinner was ready and then everyone went home and our kids came in and warmed up and we had a nice dinner.

After dinner, we relaxed in the living room with the kids for a bit, watched an episode of Sponge Bob, and then had a little ice cream cake for Ben and sang Happy Birthday to him so he could have cake on his birthday.

We were tired and so we put Ben to bed a bit on the early side today figuring all that running around outside all day would have worn him out, too, and sent the girls up to lay in bed and watch TV in their own rooms for a while so we could watch a show on our own and get some rest. More tomorrow!

Friday, November 6

This morning I got up and got Melissa off to school, had my coffee, checked my email etc. I made a decision today to leave one of my meetup groups- the stay-at-home-moms group. I had joined it when Ben was only around four months old. It was great back then, there were lots of babies his age in the group and the moms could chat while older kids played, especially in the summer. As Ben grew into toddlerhood there were lots of playdates at different houses and playgrounds and he had kids to play with, and I had moms to socialize with.

But I have been feeling for quite a while now that we have outgrown the group. With Alexa being homeschooled, she's way too old to come along to playdates at toddlers' houses. Most of the kids Ben's age have moved on to preschool and a new wave of moms joined so most of the playdates consist of toddlers, mainly two year olds. The mom's night outs used to be so popular but now they don't get much by way of attendance. The group plans fun field trips and tours and the like, but I do the same kinds of things with the homeschool group, and with that group, the kids are more my kids' age. So it just wasn't really a "fit" for our family anymore and I decided to just bow out.

Other than that, Ben had breakfast and as he was looking out the kitchen window he got very excited by a big group of birds and asked me to remind him what it was called when there was a big group like that. I told him it was a flock, and we continued watching out the window for a while, observing the birds. Our next door neighbor has a couple of bird feeders and the birds would all gather to eat. Every now and then something would startle them and they would all swoop together into a big bush where a few seconds later they'd all fly out again. At one point a bunch of them swooped over the fence and landed in our yard, and then took off again. So we had fun just watching them for a while.

Eventually Alexa came downstairs and set Ben up to let him play her DS at his request, and she had her breakfast while I chatted with my mom who stopped by for a few minutes. Then Alexa and I started schoolwork. First she did art, wherein she was able to draw anything she wanted as long as it demonstrated Size Law. She did a very nice picture of a row of houses and a street with some pedestrians and a crossing guard and a car.

After art, we did a geography review, and then I read her a chapter of "Heidi." We did a simple punctuation review exercise wherein she came up with a couple of sentences that could be written with a period, a question mark and an exclamation point, and then I wrote a few sentences without punctuate for her to figure out which punctuation mark best fit. She did math- doing the 6 Times Tables in order, playing a 6 Times Table multiplication game online, and doing a page of mixed multiplication problems, some of which could be solved using the "0 shortcut" we learned yesterday.

At this point we took a break and had lunch. After lunch, Alexa did her Daily Journal entry. I gave her a little break wherein she played in the living room and watched TV with Ben. Eventually I called her in to start writing her Social Studies report on the Lenape Indians as we did not work on it any other day this week. We should be fine as she has all of next week in which to complete it, too, so I wasn't worried, but I did want to at least start it this week. So she did the section on food, writing two paragraphs about what they ate, how they got it, how they prepared it, and what utensils they used, and then took a short break and had a snack.

When she was ready, we did a bit more on the report, writing about their shelters and villages. I then told her she could stop there and that we'd do more on Monday. She went upstairs to get out of her pajamas (finally) and said she was going to stay upstairs and play a while and asked me to call her if her friends showed up looking for her after school.

She did end up going later to her friend Zach's house until dinner time. We ate dinner, and I had the kids help straighten up. Nothing else noteworthy in the evening that I can recall; we all went up to our respective rooms on the earlier side and just relaxed and watched some TV; Shawn had his new friend come over to help him with the plumbing for his aquarium, and that was about it. More tomorrow!

Thursday, November 5

This morning Shawn got up and got Melissa off to school. I just woke up on my own around 8. Ben was already up with Shawn, so we gave him some breakfast. I got Alexa up a little earlier than usual as we had plans today and I wanted her to get some schoolwork done first. So she came down and had breakfast, and then we got started.

Shawn and Ben did one of his birthday craft kits, it was making these little creatures out of foam and pipe cleaners and little plastic tube things for arms and legs and things, and attaching googly eyes, they were cute, and Ben had fun making a few of them with his dad while Alexa and I did schoolwork.

I had Alexa write in her Daily Journal. I had her go through her last three journal entries and note her use of pronouns. I gave her a quiz on spelling, and she got all of them right. She reviewed her 6 Times Tables in order. And I gave her a page of multiplication- today she had to multiply numbers where at least one of them ended in zero, and I showed her a shortcut for doing so to save a couple of steps. For instance if we had 25 X 10, instead of lining them up right under each other, you always move the number with the 0 over so that the 0 is not lined up under anything. Then all you have to do is bring the zero down and you're left multiplying 1 X 25. Hard to explain in writing and as I was explaining it, Shawn piped in with "I don't get it," but Alexa picked it up right away and did all the problems by herself, no problem, even when there were two or three zeros in the number.

Alexa did most of her Science for today- she went outside to note the weather conditions and wrote those down. She drew a picture that had to illustrated ideas like a seed struggling out of the darkness into the sunshine for the first time, and how sun, air, earth and water bring the gift of life to our planet, and/or how plants convert energy from the sun, air, water and earth into usable energy for man and animals.

While she was doing that (and having silent reading time by reading a chapter of "Felicity Learns A Lesson"), I took a shower and got ready. We then left to go to a Salvation Army twenty minutes away to meet some other families from our homeschool group for our "C Is For Charity!" Community Helper event. As I've mentioned before, this was a program I set up and implemented where each month we meet a different "community helper" in our area who in some way talks to the kids about what s/he does, demonstrates it, gives a tour, enables the kids to have a hands-on experience, answers questions- any or all of those things that s/he can do. So in September we met with an Architect, in October we met with a Banker, and today was our Charity event.

Two families who were supposed to come today had to cancel due to sickness etc, but we had four families there, and two of them were newer members who had older kids, Alexa's age and up, which was great. We had I think 8 or 9 kids total there and 4 moms, and the bigger kids carried in big boxes filled with packages of multiple smaller boxes of candy canes. We took all the candy canes out of the smaller boxes and wrapped "Salvation Army" labels around them and then packed them individually into a big box- these candy canes will be distributed to kettle workers who will hand them out over the holidays. As we worked, the man talked to the kids about the kinds of things the Salvation Army does- providing food to people who are hungry, selling low cost clothing and items in their thrift stores, collecting money outside of stores to raise funds for helping the poor etc and about how important volunteers are to those efforts.

We stayed at least two hours and our contact was surprised at how quickly everyone was moving- in fact, he had to go home to print more labels as we were going through all the ones he'd brought! He said he was going to tell us how many candy canes we'd done- this was toward the end- but first all the kids (and moms) got to take a guess. As it turned out, we did nearly two thousand candy canes! The man was nice enough to also buy us pizza for lunch, the kids got to take little breaks and run around the big room and chat with each other, and in all I thought it was a very nice day.

When we got home, I had Alexa wrap up any schoolwork she hadn't finished. She did Health (she read to me from "The Feelings Book, The Care & Keeping Of Your Emotions," reading the sections called "The Voice Inside" and "Listening In"). I read her two chapters of "Heidi." She made up a short story to wrap up science. The idea was to compose a short story about a seed coming to life, personalizing the seed with a name, and describing its feelings as it comes awake as well as describing what it sees and experiences. I told her she didn't have to hand write that one, that she could type it. She asked me if I would type it for her since I type so fast, so I said yes and she dictated it to me while I typed it up. When it was finished, I printed it out, she cut it so we could tape it into her Science Main Lesson Book, and then she illustrated it.

Somewhere between 4:30 and 5 her friend Zach knocked on the door to see if she could play. We said they could play upstairs in Alexa's room for a bit (it was raining out) just until dinner was ready. So they played about twenty minutes, we ate dinner, and then Shawn took Alexa to Girl Scouts and dropped her off and went to Lowe's. The timing was great, he picked her up again straight from shopping at Lowe's and brought her home, so I didn't have to go out again tonight and just hung out at home with Ben.

When Alexa got home, I asked her to do the Community Helper form I give her to do each month; it's just a short form asking what Community Helper she met with, what that Community Helper does, what she specifically got to do with that Community Helper, and how she thinks our community or life would be different if that Community Helper didn't exist. Then she draws a picture illustrating the Community Helper event. That was really about it for today, we did a bit of straightening up in the kitchen, I had Alexa straighten up toys in the living room, Shawn got Ben to bed, and we watched a bit of TV. More tomorrow!

Wednesday, November 4

Very rough night with Ben last night- Shawn had come home briefly from work and put him to bed and he'd fallen asleep fine, and then Shawn had gone out to a friend's house, and sometime after 10 Ben woke up screaming and crying and miserable and wouldn't stop. He wouldn't even talk to me at first. Then he said his legs hurt. I sat in his room with him for a while trying to comfort him. I rubbed his legs for him. I took him in my bed for a while where he continued to cry on and off. He wouldn't take Tylenol. He finally said he wanted to go back to his bed where he fell asleep. Around 11:30 Shawn came home and I went to sleep. Around midnight or so Ben was up and screaming and crying again and wouldn't really talk to either of us, told his dad to "go away," complained of his legs and feet hurting again, finally fell asleep. Around 2 AM- same deal. After that he FINALLY stayed asleep.

This morning, he was fine. This isn't the first time he's complained of leg pain at night, though it is on the infrequent side that it happens. So this morning I looked up "child leg pain at night" and discovered it's: Growing Pains. Totally normal. Poor little guy! It suggested having him point the toes up as far as they would go, tylenol, massage, and/or moist heat could all help- I did try flexing his toes and rubbing his legs last night which did help some, he refused tylenol and I didn't want to force feed it to him- I just have to hope this doesn't happen often!

Anyway, I showered, got Alexa up and fed etc and at about 10 AM, Alexa and I left for our dentist appointments. She had to get a small cavity filled and I had to get a checkup and cleaning. She was a little nervous and asked me to hold her hand while she got her filling first. Then she asked if she could watch me get my checkup and cleaning. I said yes, so she stood there and held my hand and watched the dentist work.

We stopped at Subway on our way home to pick up lunch to bring home, and we stopped at the library where Alexa returned "Escape To Witch Mountain" for me. We came home and ate, and then Alexa and Ben went out in the backyard for a while to play with bubbles- Alexa had picked a little pencil shaped tube of bubbles for her "prize" at the dentist, and I still had containers of bubbles here from the summer, so they each got to bring some outside and play for a while. It was a relatively nice, sunny day so I thought the sunshine and fresh air would do them both good.

After a while, we called them in and watched the movie "Beethoven Lives Upstairs." Ben watched probably half of it before losing interest and Alexa and I watched the rest. When the movie was over, I started her on some regular schoolwork. We did a geography review, reviewing all states, abbreviations and capitals through Montana, and then she did art. For art she was able to draw whatever she wanted as long as it illustrated size law. After art, she did a quick spelling word review. She did math, reviewing the 6 Times Tables in order, playing a 6 Times Table multiplication game online, and doing another page of multiplication problems in her Math book.

For Language Arts, she wrote in her Daily Journal, and we did an exercise where we came up with some sentences and wrote them down using no pronouns, and then rewrote them using pronouns. And that was about it for school for today.

Alexa's friends were not home/outside this afternoon so she hung out with her dad in the basement for a while. One of her friends did come looking for her just before dinner, so she got to go out and play with him for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes until dinner got here. We ate. Shawn had to go into work for a little while, and Alexa and I played with her Bop It! while he was gone. She beat my high score and then I beat hers.

When Shawn was done at work, he stopped at the store for milk, bananas (which I read could help with Ben's leg pains, because of the potassium) and refrigerated sugar cookie dough- before dinner, Ben had been asking us something about making hand cookies. We asked him what they were and he said "you make your hand" (and here he gestured as if tracing his hand), "you bake it and then you decorate it with candy corn and you eat it." We asked Alexa if she knew what he meant and apparently they'd seen some sort of commercial or something on TV where they were making and decorating handprint cookies. So I started looking online and decided it would be much easier to have Shawn get the prechilled dough rather than having to make dough from scratch and put it in the refrigerator for an hour or more.

So when Shawn got back, he rolled out some sugar cookie dough and we let Ben make one in the shape of his hand, the others we used cookie cutters (well playdough cutters really but same thing!) to make other cookies in alligator, mouse and dolphin shapes. The kids enjoyed decorating their cookies with cookie icing and sprinkles (and in Ben's case, candy corn) and eating their desserts. Shawn also brought me some pouches of Betty Crocker peanut butter cookie mix so I can make peanut butter and jelly thumbprint cookies later in the week. I'll give some to my mom to mail to some of her female troops as well, apparently the peanut butter and hershey kiss blossoms had been a big hit.

Anyway, we ended up sending the girls upstairs to watch a movie together, putting Ben to bed, and watching one of our shows in our room. When it was just about over, Alexa made an appearance reminding her dad that he'd been promising for three days now to do a paperoni craft with Alexa, so we said he'd be down in a few minutes when our show was over. I read for a few minutes and ended up going to sleep, but he did go down to do the project with her.

Tuesday, November 3

This morning was Shawn's day to get up with Melissa, but I woke up early and couldn't fall back asleep so I just got up with her. I made some coffee, spent a little bit on my computer, had Melissa bring down our laundry from the bathroom, etc. Ben woke up on the early side and came down. He played for a bit while I drank coffee. After a little while, I gave him breakfast, continued with laundry, spent a while longer browsing on my computer, and then finally sat down to pay this month's bills; something I always dread doing and procrastinate on for some reason. I did good this month though, got them done and out the door by the third! :)

I sent Shawn an email letting him know how much had to go in the bank for the bills and asking him to stop on his way to work. I had Ben get him up around 10 and ask him to make us pancakes, which he did come down and do a short while later. In the meanwhile I started school with Alexa. We did art first, which we hadn't had time to get to yesterday. For art she looked through a magazine for more examples of Size Law and when we found them, she would cut them out and glue them into her Art book.

She reviewed spelling by writing a sentence for each spelling word. For Language Arts, she wrote in her Daily Journal and illustrated it. For math she reviewed the 6 Times Tables in order and did more multiplication problems- today I had her do them on her own without me hovering over her, and while there were still some she made mistakes on (mostly things like forgetting to add a carried number or adding wrong), she did get quite a few right and I am continuing to see improvement.

For Science, we just read some information tying plants and seeds into human health and nutrition and had an informal discussion using some guideline questions provided in the book regarding plant and human health; nothing written, although I did have her do one more drawing of her bean sprout which continued to change a lot since her last sketch.

For Health she read aloud to me from "The Care & Keeping Of You, The Body Book For Girls," reading the sections on "Belly Zone" and "Shapes and Sizes." And for music, she read a mini bio on Frederick Chopin aloud to me and then listened to his Polonaise Op. 53, Heroique, on Youtube.

In between these things of course were meals, as well as playing outside with her brother- he played with his playdough at the picnic table outside for a bit while she read a chapter of "Felicity Learns A Lesson" for silent reading time, and then they continued to play in the yard together with the fallen leaves and whatnot.

Alexa also completed her second potholder; she really loves that weave looming kit she received for her birthday!, and made a "Bead It Pet" using another kit she'd received.

She spent some time playing with friends and cousins outside after school until dinner time. She wanted to go back out after but I said no, it was already fully dark, especially now with daylight savings time having recently gone into effect again!

She spent some time watching TV upstairs with her sister. And we read three more chapters of "Escape To Witch Mountain," finishing the book. Just in time as it is due back at the library tomorrow! (Now we will be able to focus again on finishing "Heidi"). And that was really about it.

Monday, November 2

This morning I got up and got Melissa off to school. I made some coffee and then started going through the mess in the kitchen where we'd left bags of presents for both kids, all of which I needed to find homes for. So I started putting some things on book shelves, some things (various craft kits etc) in our game/school closet, and just trying to get things back in order.

As I was putting something on the shelf, I noticed the book "Escape To Witch Mountain" that Alexa and I have been reading together and saw that it is due back November 4th! And it's an interlibrary loan book, so it's not renewable! We are only just under halfway done with the book and only have less than three days in which to read it! I was a little worried that "Heidi" was supposed to be finished this week too as they usually give three weeks in which to read a book and write a report, so I checked ahead and was happy to find that they gave extra time for this book. Perhaps because it's a longer book and a bit more advanced reading than say "Stuart Little" was. So we actually have this week, next week AND the following week to finish it and do the report- which is great, that should be enough time as we're only a little more than halfway done with that one, too!

So anyway, around 9:30 I started some laundry, then wrote my mom an email telling her if she wanted me to do some of her laundry today, to let me know- that way she can wash some over there and I can wash some over here and it will take less time overall, since she really needs to wash everything she owns as everything smells like smoke!

I woke up Alexa, who wanted to know what our plans were for today. She made a bit of a face when I told her "well, it is a school day...." but I told her if she did her schoolwork with a pleasant attitude she could then do some of her craft kits that she got for her birthday, and she got excited and said she wanted to do another potholder, so I told her that was fine. But as it turned out, it was many hours before we were going to get any schoolwork done.

My mom called me and sounded very overwhelmed. She said she would find it very helpful for me to do some of her laundry over here, so I sent Alexa over to grab the first load. My mom continued saying that she was finding soot on her window screens and windowsill and all over the place, she had lots of things that still needed to be done, such as removing curtains to wash, picking up glass from something that broke, she wanted Shawn to clean out the inside of her computer as she was finding soot next to that, she had to go to the store to replace things she had lost as they were sitting on her nighttable where the fire started, and all sorts of things like that.

So we ended up helping out over there for a few hours- I got started on some of her laundry, got Shawn up around 10, and we went over there with the kids. The kids played downstairs in the living room. Shawn went upstairs to clean my mother's computer and start vacuuming everything to get rid of any soot. My brother helped Shawn. I took my mother to cash her check and to pick up some bagels for everyone for breakfast. When we got back to their house, we ate, and then went back upstairs to see what else needed to be done. We carried down garbage, I took more laundry home and I was washing them, drying them in the dryer with fabric softener, and then hanging them out on the clothesline for a while.

Shawn had already taken down the curtains, cleaned the computer, and was in the process of fully vacuuming both rooms and the hall. He started doing the paneled walls and you could see the walls getting lighter as he vacuumed, there was a layer of soot on the walls and everything! And it was still smelling pretty smoky up there when I first went up, my mother said she had ended up sleeping on the couch the previous night.

After everything was removed that needed to be, and everything was as clean as it could be, we came back to our house, and a very short while later, Alexa and I ended up taking my mother to Walmart so she could get the things she needed and I could get the groceries I needed. My mother needed things like new pillows, new smoke alarms, ibuprofin and a few other over the counter meds, a new alarm clock, a flashlight, all the kinds of things she'd left on her nighttable that had been ruined in the fire.

By the time we got home from shopping, it was now around 4:15 and Alexa was asking if she could go play with her friends. I knew we still had schoolwork to do, but she had also been helping out a lot with her grandma and/or watching her little brother so we could help her grandma all day long. So I told her yes she could go play after she helped her grandma carry her bags in, and I let her play with her friends until around 6:30, when I called her home for dinner. We ate, gave the kids dessert, cleared the table, and then as it turned out, Shawn had a new friend coming over around 8:30 to talk fish tanks, so we did some cleaning up in the living room too. And then I told Alexa we were going to do a little bit of schoolwork before he came.

Social Studies we skipped; it was just starting to write her report, but she has two weeks in which to accomplish that, so it did not need to be started today. I had her do her Daily Journal, and she certainly had much to write about between the birthday party and the fire at her grandma's house! She actually had to continue on the back of the page, which she has only ever done one other time before. We read about pronouns and played a little game in which we took turns trying to tell a little story about our weekend without using any pronouns at all, and giggled about how hard that was. I introduced new spelling words and she reviewed them by writing them four times each, using a different color each time.

We did math- first she played a 5 Times Table game on the computer as that was the last review set she hadn't yet finished over the weekend. Then we reviewed the 6 Times Tables in order, and she played a 6 Times Table game, too. She did a page of multiplying two digit numbers- she is doing well with this in that she knows what order to multiply all the digits and she does carry the appropriate numbers- but sometimes she carries the number too far over to the left and I have to remind her to only move one space. And other times she forgets to add on the carried number and I have to remind her. Overall she's not bad with it though and I think it's just something that with continued practice she'll have the hang of it easily.

Anyway, as we were on our last two problems, Shawn's friend showed up and they came into the kitchen, so we just wrapped up what we were doing and then moved onto the couch for geography review. We reviewed all the states and capitals learned so far, read about Montana in "Exploring The 50 States" and "The State Sticker Book," reviewed that capital a few times, and then I had Alexa go get into her pajamas and meet me in my room.

Once we were snuggled into my bed, I read three chapters of "Escape To Witch Mountain" to her. I skipped "Heidi" for today as I figured we had plenty of time still in which to finish it, where as Witch Mountain is due back at the library the day after tomorrow, and I can't renew it. Alexa is enjoying the story and would have had me keep reading, but by then I was very tired; it was about 10 PM, (which really felt like 11 PM since it was only a couple of days ago that Daylight Savings Time went into effect!) so I told her we had to get to bed and that we'd read more tomorrow.

And that was about it for today! More tomorrow!

Sunday, November 1

This morning, schoolwise, Alexa did a 3 Times Tables multiplication game on the computer (she still needs to do a 4 and a 5 to complete her review of Times Tables learned so far) and we reviewed all the states and capitals learned so far for geography. That caught us up on the schoolwork we'd planned to do Friday, other than doing a Native American craft, which we did not find the time to do.

I spent the morning doing laundry, gathering things I needed for this afternoon's birthday party, making sure all the kids were showered and things like that. Shawn went to get his haircut and the kids and I packed up the car with everything we needed for the party.

At 12:30, we headed over to where the birthday party was and carried all our stuff up and set up, and at 1 the guests began arriving. It was a really nice party! We had our family there, and Alexa and Ben each had some friends there, as it was a joint birthday party for her ninth and his fourth. There were basketball hoops, soccer goals, and balls of all different materials and sizes. There were mini trampolines, there was a climbing wall, there was plenty of room to run around. There was a Wii system and a Dance Dance Revolution game. There was a pool table, a ping pong table and a foozball table. We ordered a bunch of pizzas for lunch, set out chips, pretzels, popcorn and drinks. Shawn did face paintings for all the kids. We did cake and presents, cleaned up, and headed home- it was a very nice low stress party with plenty for the kids to do, plenty of room, and we paid one price rather than paying per person, which was great!

When we got home, a little after 4:30, we carried everything in from the car. We started putting some things away. We started opening some of the presents that Alexa and Ben wanted to play with. And then we had some excitement...my sister-in-law called me saying "we have a fire in our house." I seemed to not really comprehend and I think I just said "What? Right now?" She said "Yes, in your mom's room (on the third floor) from her cigarette!" I said something like "Oh my gosh, is it bad?" And she said "Matt (my brother) said it's pretty bad, the fire department is on its way." By this time I could already hear the sirens coming. Shawn heard my tone and saw my face and saw me start walking toward the door (my mother, brother and sister-in-law live just three houses away), and asked what was going on, and I quickly told him as I walked to the door. He ran past me and ran over there to see if he could help.

I saw my sister in law out front with the kids, and holding her dog. I told her to bring them all over and I got the kids in my house. They put the dog in the kitchen and I told the kids everything would be fine but they had to stay in the house out of the way and not go outside. I said if they wanted to watch the firetrucks they could watch from the window. Which they did for quite a while before moving on to playing with the new toys.

I watched from the porch and right in front of the house and talked to my mom who came to stand with me for a while. From what I gathered, the fire had started behind my mother's night table from a cigarette that had fallen or she hadn't put fully out or she'd flicked the head off or something, I don't know. She'd then left that room and went into a different room on the same floor where she started smelling smoke. She ran down calling to my brother and sister-in-law who didn't hear her right away. By then the smoke alarms started going off. My brother went to grab his fire extinguisher but it was reading "empty." So he grabbed some sort of bowl of water from the first floor, ran up to the third floor, and threw the water at the fire. He then ran back down to the second floor and got more water from the bathroom, and ran up again and threw more water at it. He was pretty sure he saw it sizzle out. He ran down to the second floor again for more water just in case, and at this point, my husband was over there and grabbed some too to run back up with him.

When they got up there that time, there was so much smoke that they couldn't see or breathe and at that point they just left the house. Very shortly thereafter, the firemen were there.

It was amazing to see the response. Two police cars pulled up first, followed by the first firetruck. Then the firetrucks just kept on coming. Our whole street was lined with them. They were from four different towns. As it turned out, my brother had gotten the fire out and at that point it was just smoke. The firemen brought in the hose but didn't end up needing it. They set up ladders going up to the third floor but didn't end up needing them. They brought in a big fan and opened windows and cleared out the smoke and assessed the damage and interviewed everyone in the house. They brought down my mother's night-table and a garbage can filled with her alarm clock, lamp and a few things like that that had been ruined.

They were extremely lucky. Other than a little black spot on the wall down low where the fire started and those few things of my mothers, there was no damage to the house or anything else. They kept saying thank god that didn't happen right before we left for the party today, if it had happened and then my mother had left the house rather than just walking to a different room on the same floor- or even if she'd come downstairs to have a bite to eat rather than staying on that floor, there would have been a LOT more damage.

My mother of course was shaken up and feeling terrible. My sister-in-law was saying "That's it, nobody smokes in the house anymore, at all, I don't care if it's zero degrees outside," the whole neighborhood was out watching, it was pretty crazy! But finally all the firemen left, the neighbors went back inside, the excitement was over. The kids were all fine, nobody was hurt, the house was still standing, that was the important thing!

My mother came by a little later to talk and to get some antibiotics as her medications had been among the things on the nighttable that had been ruined and she wanted to sit and chat for a while. I suggested she not sleep on the third floor just because it probably still had a smoky smell but she said she didn't want to sleep on any couches, that she'd just make them smell of smoke; I said it was only 7:30 and she should just do a load of laundry so she'd at least have bedding and a change of clothes that didn't smell like smoke and that she could wash all the rest of her clothes tomorrow, but she said she couldn't be bothered with that right now and that it didn't really smell that bad up there to her and she had the window open and her fan and she'd deal with everything in the morning etc.

So that was about it, a pretty crazy day!

P.S. Oh, Alexa did make me a potholder tonight! One of her gifts was one of those weaving loom kits, she made me a potholder with four different colors and it came out very nice! She enjoyed doing it :)

Saturday, October 31

This morning I got up around 8-ish and made my coffee, checked my email etc. Ben came down shortly after and I gave him breakfast, and let him "do school"- he did the front and back of a worksheet wherein he traced "U" shaped curves and slanted lines.

After I got Alexa and Melissa up and fed, which wasn't until around 10 AM, I told Alexa we were going to do some schoolwork since we hadn't done any yesterday. I read her a chapter of "Heidi" and had her look up the words she didn't recognize/understand. She did her Daily Journal entry and illustrated it. She did a brief activity with conjunctions wherein she read a very long sentence that used a lot of conjunctions and showed me places where it would have been good to break it up into simpler sentences while still using conjunctions.

At that point, we started math- she was to do a page of two digit multiplication, but as she was finishing the first problem, her friend Emily knocked on the door to see if she could play. I told her she could and let her go get ready and go outside, telling her we'd finish up later.

She ended up staying out for like 4 1/2 hours. During part of that time all of the neighborhood kids ended up in our next door neighbor's backyard, they have a daughter a bit younger than Ben. So I put Ben over the fence and let him play with them too and I sat out on the back steps part of the time, and watched from the kitchen part of the time. They played ball and hide and seek and ran around, and Ben got to play with all the kids outside for a good long time, which was great for him! Eventually he came back inside and the older kids moved on down the block.

I called Alexa in around 4:30-ish when it was starting to rain, and she was out there all wet. She wasn't happy about coming in or that I wasn't letting her play in the rain, but she was looking wet and cold and she'd already been out there a long time.

I don't think we did end up doing any further schoolwork, other than finishing the page of math she'd started and playing a 2 Times Table game online. We were going to start a review by playing multiplication games, where she'd do the 2, 3, 4 and 5 Times Tables, but she only ended up doing the 2's.

Other than that, Shawn was at work. This evening was our town's trick-or-treating. We'd gone to a neighboring town on Thursday and thankfully the weather had been really nice for it! Tonight I had been thinking of letting the kids just do our block and then help hand out candy at our house, but because the weather was drizzly and not that nice tonight, I didn't end up bothering to dress them up and take them around again- I was really glad they'd gone on Thursday or it would have been disappointing! But as it turned out they were quite happy to hang out on the porch (my brother and nephews came too) and see everyone's costumes and take turns handing out candy to all the kids.

We came in around 8, when trick-or-treating was over, and that was really about it for today. The kids watched some TV before bed, and I got Ben to sleep, then put together a bunch of party favor bags for the birthday party tomorrow.

Friday, October 30

This morning I got Melissa off to school, took a shower and got ready, got the kids dressed and ready, and at around 9:30, a friend from my homeschool group dropped her son off at our house. We were going to a place called Rohrbach's today, another farmer's market type place that had a kid's play place, a corn maze, pumpkins, hayrides and things like that. She had asked if I would take her son along with her as she had to work and get a couple of other things done and wasn't able to take him, so I said yes.

As it turned out, it was kind of an overcast chilly day, and everyone else who was supposed to be going canceled except for me and one other mom, but we went anyway and hoped for the best with the weather (it said there might be "patchy drizzle" throughout the day). It was a bit of a ride to get there, but the weather did hold out, rainwise. We took the short hayride to the play area, let the kids play. There was a big play-yard filled with dried corn and a bunch of digging toys and the kids had fun digging in the corn, burying themselves and running around. At one point, Alexa was buried so well she just looked like a hooded head coming up out of the corn! There were haybales stacked kind of high on which the kids could climb and then slide down these tunnel slides. There was a playset with slides and swings. And stuff like that.

After the kids had played for a while in there, we went into the corn maze and let the kids take turns leading the way and picking which way to go. We ended up not able to find our way out and had to 'cheat' at one point and just climbed over the netting and pushed our way out of the corn.

We had lunch there, and then headed home.

I got home around twenty to two. My friend had asked me if I could keep her son here until 4 as she had a doctor's appointment and she wanted to pick him up afterwards, so he stayed and played with Alexa and Ben til about a quarter to four. They played with pattern blocks, toys and the computer.

When they left, Alexa was involved in a show, so it got to be after 4 and she had not done any regular/Oak Meadow schoolwork. I told her we'd do some of it tonight and some of it over the weekend, it's a pretty light day today anyway. As it turned out, we didn't do any of it today. After her show, she'd asked if she could go out to play with her neighborhood friends and I said yes. Her dad ended up coming home early and we went out to eat, so she didn't come home until we left to do that. And by the time we got home and had the kids straighten up all their toys, I was just too tired to start anything with her and wanted just to relax and watch a little TV before bed. So we'll do everything tomorrow, probably.

Thursday, October 29

Brief entry today- We took a ride to Walmart this morning; I needed a few groceries, I needed a few more things for Alexa and Ben's birthday party which is this weekend and stuff like that. We had Subway for lunch while we were there.

We did all of our schoolwork when we got back- Language Arts was journal, reading Heidi, and going back through earlier journal entries to look for conjunctions. While we were doing this, we came across a handful of uncrossed t's and undotted i's so she fixed those as well and got a little lesson in proof-reading her work.

I read her two chapters of "Heidi," noting any unfamiliar words, and gave her a quiz on spelling words, all of which she got right.

For math she reviewed the 5 Times Tables out of order, played a 5 Times Table math game online, and continued multiplying two digit numbers by three digit numbers, which she's doing well with. For Science, she noted the weather conditions and wrote them down, and made another sketch of her bean sprout plant which changed significantly from one day to the next. For Health she read aloud from "The Feelings Book, The Care & Keeping Of Your Emotions," reading the sections called "The Real World" and "Strategy Session."

She had silent reading time, reading some of "Felicity Learns A Lesson." And that was it for school!

At this point there was some free play time, and then we started getting ready for trick-or-treating which some of the towns in our county had tonight rather than on Saturday. I had the kids get into their costumes, I did Alexa's makeup for her, we waited for Shawn to come home with KFC so we could eat a quick dinner, he did some face paint for me and Melissa, and then we drove over to Shawn's brother and sister-in-law's house as his sister-in-law, Denise, was going to come with us to take the kids trick-or-treating. My sister-in-law Kelly and my nephews came too, and we walked around getting candy and the kids had a great time.

Ben was such a big boy this year, running up to all the houses with the bigger kids and getting all excited about his candy. At one point he refused a pretzel and cheese dip thing (I don't think he expected to get something that wasn't candy!) and after a while he suddenly sat down on the sidewalk and started digging through his plastic pumpkin, telling me he didn't want to go trick-or-treating anymore. He just wanted to have a picnic! :)

Trick-or-treating was over at 8 and by a few minutes after we were back at Denise's house. Kelly took her kids and went home to get them to bed as they had school the next day. We took our kids and went inside and let the kids munch out on candy and watch TV while the adults sat around the table chatting. We ended up staying til around a quarter to 10 and then finally headed out. Everyone was tired from all that walking!

We got home and put Ben to bed; he fell asleep pretty much immediately. The girls went up to bed too, and that was it- it was a nice day; fortunately pretty mild weather tonight, so we were lucky!

Wednesday, October 28

This morning I woke up and got Melissa off to school. It's another dreary, rainy day. I looked at the weather and saw that today's said near 100 percent chance of rain during the day, and 50 percent chance of rain in the evening. Alexa was supposed to be marching in a halloween parade tonight with her Girl Scouts group, and I wasn't sure what the rain policy was etc., so I figured we'd just see how things played out during the day, and then in the after school hours we could call one of Alexa's friends from Girl Scouts (whose aunt is also a leader there for the Cadets) and see if the parade is still on and determine when it gets closer whether we want to actually go.

Meanwhile, tomorrow's weather is saying cloudy and drizzly during the day too, and tomorrow night just says "mostly cloudy." And tomorrow all day is only going to range from 42 to 55 degrees. So I'm not sure how nice our trick-or-treat weather will be, either! Worst case scenario there's a nearby town that is having theirs on the 31st rather than the 29th, but we'll play that by ear. It does seem we may not have much of a chance to do the Science we couldn't do yesterday due to rain but we'll get to it one of these days.

Anyway, I had to be at a nearby bank today at 10:30 AM to meet the other organizers from the homeschool group to get the group's bank account settled. We'd actually already done this not too long ago but the organizer decided to switch to a business account, so we had to go back to get things switched over. I decided that I'd take Shawn and the kids along with me and have them wait in the car, and then we could go to Cracker Barrel for brunch since we'd be right near it.

So I got myself and the kids ready and ended up with fifteen minutes to spare before it was time to leave, so I read Alexa a chapter of "Heidi." I did the banking, we went out to eat (and the kids' aunt was working, so we requested she be our server) and then we came home.

After a few minutes of getting settled and letting the kids play a bit, I had Alexa sit down to do schoolwork. First she sat at the computer and did some more research/reading on the Lenape Indians. She had to find the answers to some specific questions such as what materials their clothing was made out of, how they decorated their clothing, how they adorned their bodies, what musical instruments they had, what kinds of games they played, and things like that.

After Social Studies, we did a brief activity pertaining to conjunctions; I wrote down four or five simple sentences in her Main Lesson Book and she had to figure out how to combine some of them using conjunctions.

She reviewed her spelling words and she wrote in her Daily Journal. She did math- multiplying three digit numbers by two digit numbers, reviewing the 5 Times Tables out of order, and playing a 5 Times Tables multiplication game online. We didn't get to go collect seeds for science due to the weather; maybe tomorrow, but we did observe the beans she'd planted in a glass jar filled with soil; it was just a day or two ago we'd seen through the glass that there was a sprout, but today it is already up out of the dirt and rather big, too! So we looked at it, and Alexa drew it from three different viewpoints.

She did art- this was continuing on the project she'd started Monday. Monday she'd used watercolor paints to do a ground and sky background wash on a piece of paper. Today she used colored pencils to sketch in a tree and seedpods, making the seedpods in different sizes; some with two seed heads, some with one, some upside down and some rightside up, as if they were floating through the air toward the ground. This managed to demonstrate size law- objects drawn larger appear closer, and objects drawn smaller appear farther. She also used a sponge and orange paint to dab fall leaves onto the tree, letting the branches still show through. We left that to dry and on Friday when she has art again, she will finish the picture by gluing on a "window frame" made out of construction paper.

We did a quick geography review, and today I made it into a game by saying the state and then "racing" her to see which of us could say the abbreviation and capital first. And lastly we had silent reading time, she reading her book ("Felicity Learns A Lesson" which she started today) and me reading mine. When she got tired of reading, she went upstairs for a while to try to find her remote control for her TV which apparently has been missing for two days. Once again she didn't find it. No surprise, when I saw her room this morning I could only shake my head at what a mess it is yet again. So one of these days very soon she's going to have one of those days where she spends hours up in her room in an effort to get it back into reasonable shape- and had better find her remote while she's at it, too!

Close to 4:30, she asked if she could go see if she could play at her cousins' house for a while, so I told her to go ahead. I had her call her friend Haley first to 1) see if she's coming to the birthday party this weekend as she has not RSVP'd- unfortunately she can't come. And 2) to see if she was going to the halloween parade tonight as the Girl Scouts are supposed to be in it. But she's not going to be doing that either, so I told Alexa I thought we should just skip it since no-one from the Juniors are even going to be there, and it's still a damp, cold evening, even if it isn't raining. Alexa was slightly disappointed but quickly got over it and went to play with her cousins; after all she gets to put on her costume and go trick-or-treating tomorrow still.

So she played over there until dinner, and then went back over for a while. That was really about it for today, more tomorrow!

Tuesday, October 27

This morning Shawn got up to get Melissa off to school and got back into bed after she'd left. That was about the time I woke up, so I had my coffee, took a shower, got ready etc, and a few minutes to 9 I left the house to make it to my 9:15 appointment for my annual exam.

I didn't get out of there til about 10:15 and I was probably almost 15 minutes from home, so I called Shawn and asked him to make sure Alexa was dressed and eating breakfast as I'd be leaving soon after I got back home to take her to her haircut appointment. When I got home, she was dressed and eating, and I hurried her along to brush teeth and hair etc, and took her to get her haircut. Her hair was very long- pretty much down to her waist, but the ends were just getting kind of thin and straggly, and her hair was so hard to care for, especially by herself, so we ended up getting like 3-4 inches cut off. Her hair looks great! It's still long, but much healthier looking and they added in some layers which look really cute and Alexa and I both loved the haircut.

After leaving the salon, we made a stop to pay the balance on the party location for this weekend, and then came home. We ate lunch, and then finally at around 1 PM we started school.

We did math- more two digit multipliers. She's doing pretty well with it and remembers the order in which to multiply things but sometimes gets a little confused here and there or forgets to add a carried number etc. But I think with just a little more practice she'll have it down pat. We also reviewed the 5 Times Tables out of order, and then she played a multiplication game online using the 5 Times Tables. Ben wanted to play one, too, so she set him up with the game he wanted using the 0 Times Tables when she was done. He played and he knew to answer "0" for everything.

We did Health, we read aloud from "The Care & Keeping Of You, The Body Book For Girls," reading the sections on breasts and bras, which she did fine with after the first initial giggle. Ah, nine year olds. We reviewed spelling by tossing an inflatable ball back and forth while chanting the words and the correct spelling of the words.

I read two chapters of "Heidi," we wrote down any words she didn't recognize/understand, and went over what those words meant. I was reading it to her as she likes me to, and I'm wondering if she should be doing a bit more reading aloud. She does listen to me read, and she does have some silent reading time, and she does read sometimes aloud, but I don't know, maybe she should be doing it a little more often. I'll have to pay attention to that.

Other than that, for the rest of language arts she and I had fun coming up with words that are usually paired together, like milk and cookies, socks and shoes, peanut butter and jelly, and then joining them with the conjunction "and." When I first told her what we were going to do, she gave me her "that's boring" face, but once we started doing it, taking turns coming up with pairs, she didn't want to stop and filled nearly a whole page.

She did music, reading a mini bio on Johannes Brahms and listening to Brahms Lullaby on Youtube. And all that left was Science. After pointing out to her how one of the things we'd planted in the soil in the glass vase was growing a green sprout, we stopped and put off anything else, because today's Science was supposed to be going for a walk outside and collecting different seeds and seedpods, then bringing the collection home to look at with our eyes and then magnifying glasses and to sketch some of those things. However, it was a damp, rainy, dreary day and I was not about to take her and Ben out into the rain, with all of us still exhibiting some signs of lingering sickness no less, to look for seeds and seed pods. So we'll do that some other day this week when it is nicer out.

By this point, her cousins and friends should be home from school, so Alexa went over to her cousins' house to play. One of her neighborhood friends joined her there too, as he came here looking for her first. She stayed til I called her home for dinner, and after dinner she went back over there for another 45 minutes or so.

She came home a few minutes after 7 and the kids all had dessert. She played with Ben in the living room for a while; they'd put music on the TV and were dancing around. When Shawn came home, he hung out with the kids for a little while, and then at a few minutes to 9, he took Ben up and put him to bed.

I read a chapter of "Escape To Witch Mountain" to Alexa at her request. She enjoyed it and when I came to the end of what was a rather long chapter, she started begging me to read her another one. But I told her not until tomorrow as I'd already told her I wanted her to get to bed at a reasonable hour and get a good night's sleep tonight, she'd been up very late last night and had been yawning her way through her haircut appointment today. I did tell her she could bring "Meet Felicity" up and finish reading it to herself as she only had one chapter and then that "Sneak Into The Past" section left to read before the book would be finished.

That's about it for today. More tomorrow!

Monday, October 26

What a horrid morning! So Saturday night I had taken my first antibiotic since Shawn didn't get the prescription for me til late in the day. It said to take it twice a day but I figured that could start Sunday. I took it again Sunday morning and while my throat felt a little better yesterday and my headache was better, as mentioned I was still not feeling great- in bed much of the day, tired, queasy on and off etc.

Sunday night (last night, that is) I didn't bother taking the antibiotic. I had second thoughts about needing it and thought maybe I should just see if I was improving without them and then could save them for if I thought I really did need them in the future. Then this morning I woke up and had second thoughts about my second thoughts and decided what the heck, I may as well just take the course of antibiotics, it couldn't hurt and might help, right?

Wrong.

Next thing I knew, about fifteen or twenty minutes after taking the medicine, I was in the bathroom throwing up. Four times. In between I drank a bunch of water and ate a little bit of bread to try to help settle my stomach, and threw that up, too. It was awful. I felt horrible.

I then decided to research the antibiotic they'd given me as it was not one I'd ever had or even heard of before. And as it turned out, I found site after site of people complaining of similar symptoms. They'd say that they'd take this medicine and would be fine, maybe just slightly nauseous, for the first day or two, but then all of a sudden would be throwing up. They complained of nausea, dizziness, light-headedness, stomach cramps, throwing up. People who took it longer complained of anxiety, depression, mood swings, extreme tiredness (although someone else complained of extreme insomnia too) and the list went on and on.

I was appalled. I couldn't understand why they hadn't just given me a regular Penicillin or Amoxicillin or something like that; I'd never had such a reaction to an antibiotic in my life! I called the pharmacist and asked what it was usually prescribed for (because I read a lot of people saying they'd gotten it for things like lyme disease or STD's and things like that). The pharmacist said it's a "standard antibiotic" for "all sorts of things". I asked if it was a new medication and she said no. I explained that it had made me very sick and she said I should let my doctor know. Which I planned to do anyway as soon as they opened.

I did call the doctor's office and explained what had happened and they said they'd call me back; they did subsequently call me back and told me that they had called in a prescription for Amoxicillin for me. I will never, EVER take an antibiotic again that isn't something in the penicillin family; I'm sorry I ever took that one to begin with! It's now three hours since taking the medicine and I still feel queasy and "off." But at least I'm not throwing up anymore!

Anyway, Melissa did go back to school today after taking her last antibiotic. She still had a slight cough so I was hoping that wouldn't make them call me to get her, but so far so good and she did already miss a whole week and have a doctor's note to go back today. Ben's still feeling overly warm with some cold/cough symptoms and Alexa seems somewhat better and says her headache is better though her eye is still looking kind of red. I am just continuing to hope everyone gets all better before the end of this week, especially as the birthday party is on Sunday.

Speaking of the birthday party, I did call and fortunately the place was still reserved for me and they didn't seem upset that I hadn't paid my balance yet even though it was supposed to be paid just over a week ago! I told her I'd be in to pay it in person today. I got Alexa up, gave her breakfast, continued with laundry, and then started schoolwork with Alexa.

First I read her a chapter of "Heidi" while she finished eating, and made note of any words she didn't recognize/understand. Then I had her finish her Cursive Success Workbook- it was supposed to have been finished last week but with being sick and having lighter days, that was one of the things we'd put off. So she ended up with three pages left in the workbook and she finished those this morning. So now the workbook is complete and she won't need to do that every day anymore!

She did math- reviewing the 5 Times Tables out of order and playing a multiplication game online using the 5 Times Tables. We then did some multiplication problems in her Main Lesson Book using two digit multipliers. She's getting the hang of it pretty well. After math she wanted to do art. Art this week is using different media to make a picture in which she first had to take a light colored piece of construction paper and use watercolors to do a pale wash for the ground half and another color to do a sky wash background. We left it to dry. On Wednesday when we do art again she'll use colored pencils and her no outline drawing techniques to make seed pods and a tree- making the seed pods seem to be floating to the ground/through the air in different sizes will demonstrate size law. She'll also use a sponge to do a little painting on the tree. We'll leave it to dry again. Then on Friday when she has art again this week, she'll make a window frame out of construction paper and glue it onto her picture. So today she went ahead and did the sky and ground wash.

She did spelling review- I gave her ten new words and she made a little mini story using all the words and copied it into her Main Lesson Book. For Language Arts we read about conjunctions. I then read her two more chapters of "Heidi" both at her request and because we're definitely behind in regard to how much we read so far compared to how much time the curriculum allots for reading the whole book. Alexa ate her lunch while I was reading this to her. She then had silent reading time, reading more of "Meet Felicity" on the couch.

Meanwhile, Shawn had gone out to Home Depot, and I had asked him to stop to pay the balance of what we owed for the kids' party place. As it turned out the lady was not where she'd told me she was going to be and he was sent on a wild goose chase to find her somewhere else; when he found her he wanted to pay her cash, but she said that all her stuff (receipts etc) was back at the other place and it would be another half hour before she got back there and could he stop back, but by the time he was done doing what he was doing it was 2 PM- and that's the time the place closes- so now I have to go there tomorrow. Blah. I was hoping he'd get it taken care of and save me the trip.

Alexa and I did social studies- I helped her look up more things on the computer about the Lenape (native Indians of our area), reading more about how they prepared their food, what sorts of utensils and tools and containers they used, whether they had any domestic animals. I asked her what she thought about their food supply and whether it was the same in all seasons (she told me that they probably couldn't go fishing in the winter). We looked at some pictures on Google images. And then I told her if she wanted she could get ready to play outside as I thought she was much improved today.

She was quite happy about that. She got ready and went out looking for friends, but unfortunately nobody was even home so she didn't get to go play outside with them afterall; she ended up helping her dad out some more with his fish tank stuff instead. I took a ride over to the library to get a book they were holding for me, then I picked up Ben and took him to get his haircut- he did great and looks so cute with his little boy haircut. He and I stopped at the supermarket on the way home to grab my new prescription and to pick up the ingredients to make tacos for dinner. We came home, put things away, organized the kitchen a bit and made dinner.

Everyone ate, and we did our own thing, watching TV etc after dinner. Shawn eventually put Ben to bed, but Alexa ended up staying up very late continuing to help her dad, I finally had to 'yell' at them that she needed to get to bed! She then came down a short while later crying that she was scared upstairs, which she never does, so I soothed her for a few minutes and suggested she sleep with her light on tonight and see if that helped. I told her to think of happy things like her own haircut appointment tomorrow (we'd looked online to pick out a cute new hairstyle for her), trick-or-treating, her birthday party coming up, and things like that. I told her she could come back down and let me know if she got really scared again, but that seemed to do the trick as she did not come downstairs again.

More tomorrow!

Sunday, October 25

Last night was pretty miserable. I didn't sleep well, coughing kept waking me up and I'd feel too hot then too cold etc. This morning Ben came in around 8 and said he didn't feel well. He climbed into bed with me and he felt pretty hot. I snuggled with him for a few minutes, peeled his warm pajamas off, and after a few minutes woke up enough to come downstairs with him and give him some childrens' tylenol.

As for me, I definitely felt at least somewhat better than the past two days...the headachiness seems much improved and along with the other symptoms is still there but doesn't seem quite as bad, maybe. Of course my nose is still stuffy and I keep sneezing here and there and I still have the sore throat.

I'm hoping I'm starting to get better, and I'm hoping that all the kids start getting better rapidly, too. It stinks that they basically all got sick, all got better (except Melissa, who got it last), and then the first two got sick again with slightly different symptoms.

I'm getting a little nervous because I realized that Alexa and Ben's joint birthday party is one week from today. I haven't bought everything I need for the party yet. There are a few people who haven't RSVP'd yet. I had a moment of panic early this morning when I realized that I wasn't sure if I was supposed to have paid the balance for the place we rented already and I started thinking that I probably should have, I thought I remembered that it was supposed to be paid in full a week or two before the event, and all I've paid so far is the deposit. Sure enough when I got up this morning and started looking through the paperwork they had sent me, I saw I was supposed to have paid the balance two weeks before the event- 10/18/09!

Oh, no!

I've been so caught up with day to day stuff and sick kids and then sick me that it just totally slipped my mind, and they never called to go "hey, where's this money...."

So now I'm still a little stressed as today is Sunday and they are not open for me to call and actually talk to someone or to go there and pay- but I called anyway and got an answering machine and left a message explaining what happened and apologizing and asking them to call me and confirm that we still have the place available and if I could go in tomorrow when they are open to just pay the balance in person; and now I just have to wait til they call me back tomorrow and hope that they didn't drop my reservation or anything like that. Ugh.

Anyway, there was nothing else much noteworthy about today either- we all continued resting, relaxing and staying in. The kids did their own thing most of the day and for Alexa that meant another day of resting mostly on the couch and watching TV, and I spent much of the day still resting in bed, though I came down a bit more often for meals and things like that than I had the previous day.

Shawn made dinner for us again, we ate, and after dinner we did and folded a little laundry, and then we watched a Planet Earth episode together ("Pole To Pole Education"). When it was over, Shawn put Ben to bed, and I read Alexa a chapter of "Escape To Witch Mountain."

Originally I was thinking maybe I'd read to her from "Heidi" too but my throat wasn't holding up so well so we stopped after the one chapter of the one book. And that was about it, we all went up to bed. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day!