Status report

Hmmm, should I keep homeschooling or should I not? That has been the question hanging over my head for the last month. Well, actually, it is a question that I pose to myself on a daily basis.

Although some days have been bumpy for us, here are some of our celebrated successes over the past 7 months:

• I have finally trained Sydney to not say, "Nothing, " when Sheldon or someone calls on the phone and asks her what she is doing.
• I have finally convinced Taylor that Math worksheets are not just "busy work".
• Avery will now sit and do puzzles or color with crayons for 30 minutes at a time before throwing them at us. It used to be about 5 minutes.
• We have made friends with the lady at the gas station where I get my daily Dr. Pepper so I can cope with teaching Math to a certain child.
• Sydney used one of her vocabulary words from a History lesson on Babylon to accidentally insult someone. After apologizing, we decided to focus on the fact that she remembered the word. ;)

All joking aside, we are having fun with the K12 program and have registered for another year. I don't want to bore anyone with my many reasons for continuing to homeschool so I won't. Wish us luck!

Taste the Rainbow

Last weekend, my sister, Susie, invited my girls to sleep over. Yes, even Avery was invited. Did I mention that I love my sister?

I have told Susie, a.k.a. Martha, that she doesn't always need to make elaborate plans because my kids just want to be with her and Niels and escape from my yelling. However, she never listens. This particular sleepover entailed eating homemade pizza, a trip to Yogurtland, and then as a finale, learning how to make rainbow cupcakes. I know, I know. I've asked myself the same thing. Are we really sisters? Oh well, at least I got the looks in the family. :) Just joking. Thanks, Aunt Suz and Uncle Niels!

Will Work for Mickey

As most everyone knows, Disneyland is offering a free day at Disneyland to those who give a day of service to one of their chosen organizations. Now who would pass up free tickets to Disneyland for their whole family?

Our family signed up to help clean Lake Elementary's school grounds. It is an older school that is required to keep its playground gates open to the public on the weekends to double as a city park. However, the city does not help in cleaning the grounds, thus leaving the poor custodians with a huge workload.

Since there were about 75 other volunteers along with us, we were broken into groups. Our group was assigned the playground area. We were asked to scrub the playground equipment, pick up the trash (tons of broken glass!), and rake leaves. I was so proud of my girls for not complaining once and for working hard the whole time. We were only scheduled to help from 9 - 12, but some adults were sitting down on the benches after 30 minutes of being there. One lady asked if she could go home early! Taylor was disgusted with the lady and asked me if they were still going to give the lady a ticket.

My kids lit up when the news cameras started following us around. They kept yelling, "Mom, they're filming us!" I think the camera man was getting annoyed. :) We did get our 2 seconds of fame on the news that night, however. It really did feel good to get out and serve as a family and to earn our next family vacation.

"No peein' on my frog!"

One of my New Year's goals is to get Avery potty trained and say my final goodbye to diapers. I bought her a cute little frog potty on clearance at Target over the weekend thinking I scored since Avery loves the frogs from "Princess and the Frog". Avery was so excited, which surprised me because even the slightest mention of potties ticks her off. If you try to put her on the big toilet, she claws and screams like you are killing her. She also locks her body so you can't put her into a sitting position.

Anyway, I started talking to her about going "pee pee" in her frog. She replied with a giggle, "Noooo, no pee on the frog," like I was so silly for telling her to pee on her new frog. After some more coaxing, I tried to tell her to pee in the frog again, but this time she was passionate and ANGRY!

"NO PEEIN' ON MY FROG!!!"

Hmmm, I probably should have got a potty chair that resembled more of a toilet and not a cute little frog. Ain't nobody gonna pee on that girl's frog!

Note to Self

Note to Self: Place makeup bag, specifically mascara, on a higher shelf.

Not your typical field trip

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Today, Taylor and I got the rare opportunity to tour the Nevada FBI headquarters thanks to my great friend, April, who arranged everything. It was most definitely not your typical field trip. The parents had to pass a background check, sign privacy disclosures, walk through metal detectors, no cameras, etc. However, the most significant difference I found with this field trip versus past field trips was the fact that our kids got to go inside the FBI gun vault to learn about all of their weapons and even got to hold one of their Tommy guns. You would probably have a parade of angry mothers in the front office of the elementary school threatening law suits had this been a regular school field trip.

Thanks, April, for taking the time to set up such a unique and fun field trip for us!

Halloween 2009

The little butterfly who hated her wings and yelled "Gimme a treat!" at every house. She has told everyone that she was Abby Cadaby from Sesame Street. Please no one tell her that she was a butterfly, it makes her really mad. ;)

Sydney is infamous for picking a gruesome costume. She has been wearing her fangs for about a month now and also running as fast as she can around the house to make sure her cape flew behind her. She was so excited for Halloween this year and couldn't be bothered waiting for her sisters while trick or treating. She was usually 2 or 3 houses ahead of the rest of us.

Taylor has always chosen to be some sort of princess every year. Even her bat costume in Kindergarten turned into a bat princess. This year she wanted to be an Egyptian princess so I introduced her to Cleopatra. She played the royalty part well as usual. I think she was mostly excited that her dad let her wear makeup this year.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

"Help! I'm snuck!"

Avery has a typical 2 yr. old fascination with slamming doors and locking them. Her bedroom door has been very sensitive to its horrible treatment and decided not to unlock and let her out after several attempts at opening it with screwdrivers, butter knives, excessive force, yelling at it..........

After 45 min of failed attempts to open the blessed door and listening to "Help, I'm snuck!", I called her father to come home and rescue her. However, while we were waiting for him, her other super hero, Taylor, stepped in to help keep her calm and even pushed some fruit snacks under the door for her. Thank goodness for big sisters and fruit snacks in times like these.

One fall...that's all.

Since Sydney is turning 7 in a couple of months, Sheldon and I decided that having training wheels on her bike was no longer an option. Actually, Sheldon took her wheels off a long time ago, but she won't ride it. She always opts for the scooter. Well, the scooter is now broken and I am refusing to buy her a new one so she will learn to ride her bike.

Today was a beautiful day so Sheldon and I took the girls to a park with a walking trail and lots of grass so Sydney could learn to ride her bike. Piece of cake, right? Wrong! Sheldon gave her the pep talk, walked her through the steps of keeping it steady, held on to the back and started pushing her along and Sydney screamed BLOODY murder while sticking her feet out to the side and off the pedals. Keep in mind, this walking trail has houses that back up to it. I'm pretty sure we had all of their attention and that at least one of them was dialing 911.

After an hour, Sheldon finally got her to pedal. And then.....she fell into a plant and was done. There was no talking her or bribing her into getting back on. One fall and she was done. Maybe another day. Teaching a child how to ride a bike rates about the same on my list as potty training. It sucks!

Spooked

Being that I have not one creative bone in my body, I am always amazed by other people's creations. Recently, Sheldon came home with a skeleton that a lady in his office had made for us by using old milk jugs. My kids were so excited! Well, except for Avery. She pretty much thinks it's the spookiest thing she has ever seen. In fact, she makes a huge circle around it when she has to walk by it and keeps one eye on it at all times. I probably should take it down since she is so scared of it, but instead I am thinking about keeping it up year round and hanging it by the dog food so she'll stay out of it or in the bathroom so she'll quit unrolling the toilet paper. Mother of the year here, I know. Well, I probably won't keep it up all year, but at least until Christmas so I can keep the ornaments on the tree this year.

A new direction

It seems like the easiest and most efficient way to update all of my friends and family is via my blog. It would probably be more personable to call everyone, but who has time for that? Just kidding.

It's probably easier to update everyone via my blog so I am not listening to all of the gasps as I say that I have withdrawn Taylor from her elementary school as of this Friday. She will resume 4th grade with Nevada Virtual Academy a.k.a K12 on Monday morning.

Let me clear the air by saying that I am not anti-public school. (Well, maybe anti-public school lunch) In fact, Sydney will remain in public school because she is thriving and enjoying every minute of it. Taylor has also enjoyed public school and has always been on the A/B honor roll, but not without a struggle. I have looked into K12 over the past 2 years, but this is the first year they are fully funded by the school district. K12 has always appealed to me since it provides the same core curriculum as the public schools, but their assigned teacher works closely throughout the week with the student to determine where he/she needs extra help and then focuses their next lesson on where they are struggling. I also get a weekly email showing me exactly where Taylor needs more practice and suggestions on how to help her. Since Taylor is needing some individualized attention and her class size is now double from last year, we felt like this was a great time to give K12 a try.

Will Taylor become a shut-in or become socially awkward by not attending a public school? Absolutely! :) I know that everyone has their opinions on this and I'm not bothered by hearing them. We may try K12 this year, hate it and go back to public next year. However, Taylor is excited to join K12 and I am going to exhaust all of my energy into making it a positive experience for her. She already has a field trip scheduled to the F.B.I. and study groups set up with her friend.

Yes, I may need some serious Dr. Pepper and chocolate to get me through the upcoming school year. I may also be missing in action for a bit while trying to settle into our new schedule. If you want to check out what K12 is, you can check out their website at K12.com.

Did that just happen?

I don't think I can adequately describe the horror my girls and I witnessed in my backyard a few hours ago. There is a running list of things that paralyze me with fear...snakes, sharks, crocodiles, bridges.....and somewhere near the top are spiders and wasps.

Today, I was out laying by the side of the pool while my girls were swimming. I was completely relaxed until I heard Taylor scream, "Mom, what is that?" as she pointed at the flower bush near me. I turned my head to check it out. Was it a bird or a cat making all of that rustling noise in there? no, IT WAS A FREAKING TARANTULA! It came scurrying out of the bush as fast as it could trying to escape from what looked like a black wasp with bright orange wings.

My neighbors probably called 9-1-1 after hearing the high pitched screams coming from our backyard as we all booked it into the house with record speed. We watched through the sliding glass door as this "black wasp" stung the tarantula and killed it. It then dragged the tarantula about 5 feet across the grass and back into the flower bush. WHAT?! I had never seen such a strange looking wasp let alone one that could drag a huge spider across my yard. My poor girls were mortified and probably even more so as they found their mom on the floor crying in fetal position. Just kidding, but I won't lie, I was hyperventilating and very jumpy. I had never seen such a crazy looking wasp let alone one that could drag a spider three times it size across my yard.

I was so freaked out that I had to google "wasp with orange wings". It turns out I have a "tarantula hawk" living in my flower bush. They are wasps that paralyze large spiders with their sting and then they drag them back to their home to bury them in the dirt for their larvae to eat. Oh, by the way, the spider doesn't die, it's just paralyzed as the little baby wasps are eating it. WHAT?!! I have a paralyzed tarantula buried in my back yard with little baby paralyzing wasps feeding off of it. Anyone want to come over for a swim?

A gift from the heart

Recently, to my chagrin, Sheldon acquired a '68 Ford pickup truck. Yes, he still has the red mustang. (We won't go there) This "new" truck does not have A/C and Taylor has been worried about him. Her specific complaint was, "He will suffer from heat exhaustion!" I jokingly made the comment to Sheldon that Taylor had a military cooling neckband that he could wet and wrap around his neck when he drives the truck. Taylor did not like my comment because if anyone knows Taylor, she is not particularly fond of sharing. (As a side note, Taylor got the band from a military dad during career week at school)

This morning, Taylor knocked on our bedroom door bearing a gift for Sheldon wrapped in a red plastic cup with a note on top covering the contents of the cup. Here is what the note read:

Taylor had lovingly decided to gift her neck band to Sheldon, but her generosity had a "limit". He had to still let her use it and also needed to give her 20 bucks for it! What happened to the days when the girl got excited over a handful of pennies? Oh well,what can we expect from a girl whose dad used to make kids at recess pay him or give him something before they could use the slide?

Wanted: Hockey mask and/or helmet

Sydney has always been my not so coordinated child who somehow finds a way to bump the same spot on her head on walls, other people's heads, etc. I always joke with her that I am going to make her wear a helmet when she plays.

We made a quick trip to Idaho this past weekend for Sheldon's grandma's 80th birthday. The first night we were there, Sydney missed a frisbee tossed (more like chucked) at her by Taylor and got a shiner.



The second night we were in Idaho at the actual 80th bday party, Sydney and some boys were running around in a recreation room filled with ballet bars at the senior center and Sydney ran into one of the brackets holding up the ballet bars and cut open the right side of her face in three separate spots. The scariest part for me was that one of the cuts was about a centimeter from the bottom of her eyeball. We rushed her to the ER and came out 11 stitches later. (I'm still wondering if they count them so they can charge you for each one.)

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Don't let her little face break your heart too much. She has definitely been milking it for all the dessert and treats she can get. Also, everyone keeps telling her how cool the bottom cut is because it's shaped like Harry Potter's lightning bolt scar.

Happy Birthday, Taylor!

Today is Taylor's 9th birthday! I usually only do a big birthday party for my kids every other year and Taylor got her big party on her 8th b-day. Taylor, however, talked me into letting her have a small pool party with friends this past weekend since we FINALLY have a pool for her to fulfill her pool party fantasy with. She invited just a few girls from school and had a great time this past Saturday.

Today was also Taylor's award ceremony at school. I was supposed to bring treats to her class this afternoon, but she asked me to bring donuts in the morning instead. Hmmm...I wonder why she wanted to do her treats so early. Oh, I know, she told her teacher that she was going home with me after the award ceremony (it got over at 10:30 am) since it was her birthday. The girl knows how to celebrate her birthday and apparently, it didn't involve school.

Once I left the school parking lot, Taylor asked me if I would take her to Target so she could spend some of her birthday money on herself. She didn't see the scarf she was looking for there so she didn't buy anything. (What 9 yr old wants a scarf?) On the way home, she asked what I was making for lunch. Once I told her Ramen noodles, she asked me if I could swing thru Taco Bell to let her buy her own lunch for her birthday. She was nice and bought me a taco for taking her there. :)

Sometimes it is a curse, but mostly, I consider it a blessing to have a daughter who knows what she wants in life and tries to make it happen.

Happy Birthday, Taylor! We love you.