Easier than I thought

Yay! After making a few phone calls (and, surprisingly, actually getting people instead of automated systems) I learned that I can do all the paperwork myself and they don't need Blair's signature to move the registration & insurance over to the new car. The lady at the motor vehicle office said that I can sign stuff there in his place, since we're married, and the insurance lady said that since I'm on the policy there, it's just a matter of swapping it over to this one. Always happy when things go smoothly. :-) ... So we'll (Diane & I, and the kids) go pick up the car tonight, then hopefully we'll get all the paperwork done tomorrow --- only one aggravation... the landlord has his guys replacing windows and they're next door... I'm hoping that doesn't mean we're scheduled for tomorrow (they've not really been working in order, sort of zig-zagging around the neighbourhood) because while some people might not mind them coming in and doing work without being home, I do. I have 5 cats - to replace the windows, they tear them right out...if I'm not here, there will be cats wandering out the windows onto the scaffolding they set up! ;-)

Vroom

It's a Saturn station wagon, and after supper tonight, it will be sleeping in our parking lot. (That photo is the photo from the ad - I don't have a field, nor a woodpile) Why? Because yesterday we bought it. It's a replacement for the Hyundai that had begun to shed bits of itself and is in need of more repairs to pass inspection than it's worth paying for. We've sunk too much money into that thing and it's too small for us - poor Christopher has to sit in his car seat with his legs off to each side because I'm tall(ish) and have to have my seat quite a ways back. (I can't put his car seat on the other side because the passenger side rear seatbelt is busted) Cindy and her friends fold themselves like accordions to climb into the back (through the front doors, as it's only a 2 door) and you can't fit much at all into the hatch. It's just too small - not a family car. It's not ready for the junkyard(unlike the previous two cars we've let go - those went straight up west to the guy who scraps 'em) but it's not working for us. It's also not been the least bit dependable - and this is the most important thing. It's had all sorts of problems starting and staying running - anytime I had to go out of town, I borrowed my friend's car and left her with mine, because while me getting stranded on the highway with a broken car would be one thing; getting stranded with two (or more) kids in the car is something else entirely.

The Hyundai would be ideal for a young single guy who knows how to fix all it's problems. Someone who can work on it and doesn't have to fold children into the backseat - and I just might know someone who fits that description. :-)

Blair (dh) and Norm (best friend/cousin) got on usedpei.com from out west and started browsing, then called me up and said to go have a gander at this Saturn. Of course, being that I know next to nothing about cars (okay, not really 'nothing' - but not enough to buy a used car comfortably), they set it up so that Diane (N's c/l wife) and I took a guy up with us, a friend of Norm's who knows cars. He checked it out, took it for a drive, and ended up saying that if we didn't buy it, he would LOL

We gave the guy half last night and have to go back up with the other half this evening after Diane gets off work and Cindy gets back from drumming.

Now here comes the tricky part - I have to look into this today - ... getting the registration & insurance stuff sorted. See, the Hyundai is registered in Blair's name, and the insurance has both of us... if he were here, he'd just go down and slide everything to the new one - but he's not. I don't know if we can do this now or if we have to wait until he gets here for his 10 days (he's coming home for 10 on April 23rd, they both are - yay!!!) .... I don't know much about all this and I don't know if I can move everything to the new car without him here to sign things.... gonna make some phone calls today and find out....

oooo, and the nice thing? The Saturn is newly inspected. Yay! (Ours was due in March and wouldn't pass). It's also in great shape body-wise (that's dirt in the photo)..the body on these is mostly fiberglass I guess and that doesn't rust out. Lot of miles on it and it has some quirks (like a toggle switch for the backup lights since they won't come on when you put it in R) but eh, it's a cheap(ish) car and it works.

Still not my puppy, but adorable ears nonetheless. ;-)

Everything went great! We were up at 5:30am and there for 7am - it's 10:30am now and we're home - Christopher is having a snooze upstairs; he's still a bit tired.

The ladies in day surgery were wonderful - they listened when I explained his issues and they had no problem with me taking him into the operating room myself (there's no way he'd go with someone he doesn't know). They had me wear an absolutely ridiculous looking hat, coat, and shoe covers LOL ... and since he refused to lay on the table, they had us sit in a chair and they put the mask on him that way. He fussed, but I sang to him and he was out like a light in a matter of seconds, it seemed. Boy does that stuff stink though - he tried to shove the mask off once and I got a whiff of it, yuck!

It only took them a short time to get the tubes out and clean his ears up inside, then he was out to the recovery room and awake very soon after.

The ENT wants to see him again in May - they'll decide then whether he needs a new set of tubes, I guess.

The one thing he keeps telling me is that "the mask is stinky" LOL ...yep, it sure was!

No, that isn't my puppy - but it came up when I went searching for ears and it's so much cuter than a photo of human ears. *grin*

Christopher is being put under tomorrow to have his ear tubes removed. Apparently, they've been in for too long and I'd like to kick our family doc because I'd questioned him several times about Christopher's ears and not once did he ever send us back to the specialist (you can't just go see that guy, you have to be sent).. Well, he finally did, and after the ENT looked at them, he said they needed to be removed. So, tomorrow morning I have to take him in to the day sugery dept at our hospital and they'll take them out.

I've explained it to him, and while he doesn't really understand all of what will happen, he knows that we're going there and that he'll go to sleep for a while so that "the doctor can fix your ears" .

I'm not fond of things like this - not because I don't trust the doc to do the work (he's an ENT, this is the sort of thing he does routinely) but because I'm used to running into troubles with medical staff who don't consider Christopher's disabilities when they're dealing with him. We'll see how this goes tomorrow, I guess.



Meanwhile, our house seems to have a bit of a turtle problem. Of the ferocious looking Ninja variety. ;-)

Bunnies and guys with white beards

That's Cindy, visiting with the bearded guy himself, back in December. The next time a photo like that is taken, she'll be wearing a sneaky grin..... We, as her parents, have been officially busted.

Yep, she figured it out. Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the works.

She came to me today and told me that she thinks it's really us, and asked for the truth - prior to this, she's dropped a few bits of conversation, more along the lines of "I wonder how ______ gets around the entire world in one night. That would be kinda hard!" and stuff like that, but she's never come with the seriousness she had today, asking for "the real truth", with an extremely suspicious look on her face.

So, I answered her honestly - and she replied with "yeah that's what I thought." and started laughing ---- then you could see a light go on and she says "So it was YOU GUYS who gave me all those presents!! THANK YOU!!!!" and grinned from ear to ear.


I was worried that she'd be upset, but she said that she kinda figured as much and that she was glad I told her the truth, and that it's "exciting" because now she can "help play the game with Christopher!" .......

But....



......



.... dang, couldn't she have waited until tomorrow? It's Easter-eve! LOL


Ah well. They all grow up sometime. *sniff sniff*



(Edited to add: I realize that there are many around who don't do the game of Santa, Easter Bunny, and such, with their kids... and I do actually understand why - especially with everything I've learned in the past year. But we'd been 'doing' those characters since the kids were little and I figured Cindy's time was coming soon enough that she would figure it out for herself.. I have to go do a little research because I told her what I knew of the original St. Nicholas and she asked for more info and also asked where the story of the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy came from...those two, I haven't a clue. Google time.)

Easter mobiles

The kids and I were talking this morning about what Easter really is - until the past year, holidays in our house were pretty much just done in a secular fashion - and we decided to make some cute little mobiles....





The templates came from here - we didn't print them out in colour because they wanted to colour their own. :-)

They used paper towel rolls wrapped in construction paper because we didn't have anything that would work well as a wooden frame or such (popsicle sticks were too small!)

Christopher didn't want to stand up with his after, but here's a closeup of how he decorated it:





and a closeup of how Cindy decorated hers:

Rosetta Stone Contest

I came across this during some blog hopping, and given that I've heard a fair bit of good about this program but sure can't afford it, I thought I'd hop on the wagon and enter the contest as well. :-) (I'm kinda new to these sorts of contests) The text in blue is copied from the original post on Jeneric Jeneralities. It seems that to enter the contest, you need to copy that and post it, in blue, then go over to her original post and let her know that you posted it, with a link to your post. So here it is! :-)


Rosetta Stone has been the #1 foreign language curriculum among homeschoolers for a while -- next week they are unleashing a brand new curriculum, and you can WIN the *all new* Rosetta Stone Homeschool Version 3… FOR FREE!

This is a $219 program (and believe me it's worth every penny!) and the winner gets to pick from any of these 14 languages: Spanish (Spain or Latin America), English (American or British), Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Irish, Hebrew, or Russian.

This will also include a headset with microphone, and students will participate in lifelike conversations and actually produce language to advance through the program. Rosetta Stone still incorporates listening, reading and writing as well, in addition to speaking. Many homeschoolers requested grammar and vocabulary exercises, and with Rosetta Stone Homeschool Version 3, they're included! For parents, the new Parent Administrative Tools are integrated into the program and allow parents to easily enroll students in any of 12 predetermined lesson plans, monitor student progress, and view and print reports.



To win this most excellent program -- in the language of your choice -- copy these (blue) paragraphs and post it in (or as) your next blog post -- then to enter the contest, go to the original contest page HERE:
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/JenIG/501132/


and leave a comment with the link showing where you blogged about it. And please make sure the link works to get back to the original contest page when you post it. And good luck! The winner will be picked randomly on March 26, and will be notified thru the link they left to their blog pg. And if you have more than one blog, you can post them and enter those separately for more chances to win. Yay for free stuff!

Sure would be nice to win! :-)

Okay, I don't know why the link in the center isn't clickable ? It doesn't become so when you paste it or type it. But at the top of my post, it links directly to her posting. In case you miss that, it's here.

Aprons, Brownies, Stickers, Max, and Angel

There's a mouthful for a title. ;-)



Isn't it cute? In a fit of domesticity, I picked this cute thing up at Frenchy's (a local thrift shop) - If nothing else, it might stop me from staining some parts of my clothes, as I'm a bit of a klutz in the kitchen. The ulterior motive is that there's a rule - if I'm wearing my apron, I have to be 'working' - whether that means scrubbing dishes or tackling Mount Laundry. Mmmhmmm. Plus..it's cute!


Speaking of 'in the kitchen' kinda stuff, here's Miss Cinders busy making brownies the other day...yes, from a box. "From scratch" isn't a term that gets mentioned much in this house. (yet)



...though we misread the size of pan required and the only one we had was a bit big....this led to very VERY thin brownies that came out crunchy, more like chocolate cookies. Still yummy!



Stickers are much more fun on foreheads than on paper aren't they? Christopher would certainly agree! ;-)





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Mister Maximilian Grey, enjoying his special food....he's supposed to eat up in Cindy's room, but he prefers my lap.





And a certain female feline wants to say hi to her Papa.....she knows he sees this blog and she says "I miss you! Meow!" ...yep, she's Papa's girl.

I've been tagged..ack! LOL

I've been tagged by Ganeida for the first time - and of course she couldn't give me something simple, she goes and asks for my deepest, darkest secrets. *grin*

Given that my husband reads this, I'd better be careful. :-o

KIDDING. ;-) ... There's really nothing he doesn't know about me - or at least, nothing I haven't told him. Whether he was actually listening at the time is another story. Ha.

So here we go... " 8 things you don't know about me" (except for Blair!)

1. My favourite show ever, in the history of television, is Macgyver.

2. I actually wrote multiple fan letters to Richard Dean Anderson as a child. Got a postcard back one time and it Made. My. Year. ... Sadly, that postcard has disappeared over the years since then. (I think I was 11)

3. Someday, I want to buy a big house in the country and adopt a handful of kids to join the two we have now. Not babies - older children. Many people want to adopt babies; it's the older children who may spend years in foster care because there aren't enough families willing to adopt them. Older kids, special needs, sibling groups....that's where our adopted kids will come from.

4. I live in my crocs - once the snow leaves, you'll rarely find me with anything else on my feet. These are the kind I have, in orange and in blue, and of course they have jibbitz

5. I have a 44 year old full size banana seat bike in the basement and yes, I do ride it. It's green, with a black seat and fairly shiny chrome, and it amuses the neighbourhood kids to no end.

6. I used to have pet rats (they got old and I had to put them down - rats only live a few years) - one was an albino (white with red eyes) and his name was Merlin, the other was black and white with dark eyes and his name was Jasper. Jasper was pretty shy, but Merlin was happy to ride around on my shoulder, tucked under my hair.

7. Every morning I drink my coffee from a Winnie the Pooh mug. I wish it was Eeyore, but I've never found a mug with him on it. (Eeyore is my favourite!)

8. I HATE TEA. blech. yuck. spitsputtergag.

There we go...eight things. Okay, so they weren't very deep and dark. But they still fit the bill for things that (most) people reading this likely wouldn't know.

Now hmmm, I'm supposed to tag 8 other bloggers... I don't really know enough bloggers to do that -- there's 9 blogs on my sidebar, but only a couple of those people do I know enough that I wouldn't mind going and telling them they've been tagged LOL...here's two of those though. :-)

Dawn & Tiffany - consider yourselves tagged. *neener*

Other than that, anyone who wants to do it can just grab it and run. :-)

Changing books

Miss Cinders and I had finished with the Little House on the Prairie book as our read-aloud and the plan was to start "The Incredible Journey" ...well, after reading the first chapter, we've changed books. I should have sat down and read the first chapter myself - I've read the book, but it was a long time ago - because I'd have realised that it wasn't going to work right now. Cindy was listening, but it became pretty obvious that most of what I was reading was going right over her head and she was b.o.r.e.d. I stopped, and asked her if she was understanding it and she wrinkled her nose and said "Not really."

It's hard enough to get this child engaged in a book - the last thing I want to do is bore her by reading something that she's not understanding. For some kids, this book wouldn't be difficult at all, whether they were reading it themselves or having it read to them.. for her, it was. The Incredible Journey went back onto the shelf for some other time down the road.

So, we've changed over to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I have an old hardcover edition that I picked up at a used book sale and I read a few paragraphs from the first chapter and she perked up - I asked her if she liked this better, was she understanding what she was hearing, and she said "Yep!" ... much better. :-)

Postcard Kids

Wowsers.

We signed up for the Postcard Kids group on yahoo a while ago - this is a group for homeschoolers to exchange & collect postcards from all over the place, it's a fun way to work on some geography -- but had yet to get involved... last night, I posted and intro there (who we are, where we're from) and I just opened my email to find over 20 replies from people who would love to have a PEI postcard...wait, make that 22. I just refreshed my mail and there were two more!

Looks like a) it's a hopping group (which is awesome!) and b) there are probably very few people from the island, if any, on there. I doubt there's any others. *grin*

I think it's fantastic though, and so does Cindy - which is the whole reason that we're participating!

A bit overwhelming to find that many emails so quickly, but not entirely surprising. I'm kinda used to being the token islander in a group LOL

A few people have requested Anne of Green Gables postcards, but I've replied to them that I'm not positive I can get hold of those yet --- the Anne ones are generally sold in the tourist shops and most of those aren't open yet... but I'm gonna turn over some rocks anyway and see if I can find Anne specific postcards since I suspect more will want those. Red haired chick is kinda popular.

Oops.

So. Cindy has this tv stand - it's actually a microwave cart, but it works nicely as a tv stand for her little tv - in her room, and there's a shelf in it that fits a dvd player (and other stuff) just perfectly....except for the fact that the dvd player cord had to go out and around to plug it in, since there was no opening at the back for the cord to travel through....I figured we could fix that - it's annoying, because the cord ends up hanging all over the place, rather than tucked away behind the stand.

It didn't exactly go as I'd imagined. :-o


This is my hammer.



It's old and yucky, but as far as hammers go, it works.



It has a lovely round end. Round is good - round is what I wanted for a cord hole. A nice round hole, about the size of the end of the hammer, big enough for the cord end to fit through and go down the back to be hidden.

Here is the left side of where I wanted the nice little round hole....



My hammer end is round.

I figured that if I swung it good and hard, it would punch a nice little round hole, the size of the hammer head, right through that wood. Then, we'd slide the cord through and all would be well.

Perhaps not.





Well, the cord fits.

Max & purpleness

Max is doing well so far. He's fond of the food that the vet prescribed and he doesn't fuss too much with his pills (he doesn't love them, but I just have to put it back on his tongue, close his mouth, and stroke his throat for a few seconds and down it goes) and this morning he was on the bed purring and biting my fingers. <3

He's a bit tired looking, but I'd say that's half from being sick and half from his pills. I noticed 'drowsiness' on the list of side effects when it's used in humans, so that likely effects cats as well.

But he's here, and he's purring and eating and doing well. <3

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The purple bedroom update that I didn't do:



Halfway done in that picture....




And there she is trying out the extended stick for the roller - even with a slightly lower ceiling, it was still top heavy and she only did it for a few seconds. The ceiling was all my job. *grin*

She loves it! We had just barely enough paint to finish it all with one coat - this is slightly darker than the blue for the living room and one coat turned out to be enough... barely, but enough. :-)

He's back home

^^ Laying in a sunny spot in the living room after I brought him home.

What the vet said: It was indeed one of the possibilities I'd considered. Feline Urologic Syndrome. This article gives a fairly decent explanation of that.

She (the vet) said that his bladder was quite full, though not as full as it can be, and luckily he wasn't completely obstructed, so they didn't have to go with the catheter. They gave him medication to "relax his urethra" and they were able to get some urine out of him to check it - sure enough, crystals and red blood cells. (The crystals are almost like glass and are very irritating, hence the red blood cells.) A bit later, they got a good stream of urine from him, leading the vet to allow him to come back home - still to be carefully watched though. They want him back immediately if he shows any signs of trouble, and in a week for a re-check of his urine if all goes well.

This kills cats, especially males, if it's not caught and treated in time. The paper I have from the vet says:

"FUS is an emergency and prompt treatment is essential."

" Total urinary obstruction results in depression, lack of appetite, vomiting and eventually coma and death."

So, he now has a prescription - Novo-Prazin(Prazosin) - which, oddly enough, is used in humans for high blood pressure -- and needs to eat specific canned food for the next month (that and that ONLY) to dissolve the crystals. There are three choices for him, they gave me a sample can of each to see which he'd like and eat.

Hill's Prescription Diet Feline s/d, Med-i-cal Dissolution Formula, and Royal Canin Urinary SO (googling the med-i-cal one gave me pause when I saw the recall notice, but that's not current, it's fine)

So he has to eat one of those three - whichever he likes best, we'll see - for the next month and nothing else (except water of course!). No dry food at all, no treats, no people food. After that, he can go on a preventative diet, aimed at keeping this from happening again. For that, he can have the Hill's Prescription Diet c/d or another that looks like s/o on the vet paper, but I don't see that in the Hill's list. That's the only dry he can have, in a months time, and then he can have canned from the store, but only the "pate" kind, not the chunks & gravy stuff.

She also suggested that I get one of those cat drinking fountains (I've never seen that one, it was just the first link that came up. Serves the purpose) because water consumption levels can factor in the prevention of crystals and although he's always been fine with the drinking dish that I have, she says this type of thing is best. I'll have a look at Walmart here and see what they have.

Poor little guy has had a rough day (and night).

Vet has him

I called them and described how he was acting last night and today and they said to bring him in right away and they'd keep him there until the vet could see him. We found a box in the basement and put a blanket in it and took him over...now we just wait until they call.....

I was supposed to have the neighbour's daughter here all day today (for the last time - I'm finished babysitting her now) and I'm rather glad that the mom called this morning and said that she was taking the day off and wouldn't need to send her daughter over, given the circumstances. Cindy's pretty upset and the last thing she'd need today would be to have her here - they don't get along very well and Cindy's kinda sensitive about people seeing her upset. (Very normal)

Waiting and worrying. My furry friends are like extra kids, y'know?

Max

My little half-dog-half-cat orange furry friend is sick. :-(

I don't know what's wrong - I'm taking him to the vet today whenever they can fit him him. He was kinda quiet for most of yesterday, and then later last night he started throwing up and acting weird in the litterbox. He doesn't want anyone picking him up and he can't jump - this is a cat who's often on top of the fridge and a few moments ago he tried to hop on the bed and gave up, looking back at me with this sad little look in his eyes.

I have a few theories. I've had a lot of cats and dealt with a few sicknesses, so I have some ideas of what this could be, but I won't know for sure until we get him seen by the vet.

*worried*

:-(

It's beginning to look a lot like...purple!

Here we go again, this time with Miss Cinder's bedroom! :-)



She didn't get to paint the ceiling in the living room because she couldn't reach, even with the extended piece on the roller (well, she could, but barely and it was too top heavy) so she decided to try and reach her own ceiling....





She's actually airborne in that, bouncing from her bed. *grin*

Cindy & Buddy visit Venus

A little assignment in Cindy's astronomy text yesterday was to create a small comic strip about going to Venus - and of course, as she's obsessed with Golden Retrievers lately, she included "Buddy". (She has a huge stuffed Golden Retriever and that's his name.)

(Yep, I spotted the "Bunddy" spelling along with "nevermined" - Cindy's spelling has improved a great deal this year, but she still gets errors like that when she's focused more on other stuff, which of course she was with this.)

She's got a sense of humour, that kid - having it turn up to be just the dog's shadow. :-P

Interestingly - I'd read Dawn's post on comic books and mentioned in a reply that I didn't think Cindy had ever read a comic book... now, I haven't asked her, but she took this assignment and ran with it, never asking any questions about how to lay the story through the panels, and look at the block lettered "OH MY GOSH" in the center... something tells me that although I've never shown her any comics, she must have read a few somewhere along the way! I'll have to ask her later! :-)

GLAST

I was blog hopping earlier today and followed a link from Day by Day Discoveries to Serious Learning, where I found this post which, as you'll see if you click the link, led to this site where you can suggest new names for NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, otherwise known as GLAST (you can see why they need a new name eh?)....

I read it to Cindy and and as she's been doing an Astronomy course this year, she was interested and hopped in right away with a name for it....

The ExEx! :-)

Yep. That's the name that she suggested on their name suggestion form ....I asked her why and she replied that the first "Ex" is for "Exploring" and the second "Ex" is for "Express" --- now, the first one made sense to me, but I had to inquire further about "Express".. she said that she just liked how it sounded. Of course, why didn't I think of that? :-P

Everyone who suggests a name gets a certificate that they can print - it doesn't come with your name on it, but I saved the image and added that in with a program I have before printing it out... much to the excitement of one 11 year old girl. ;-)

Things that go purr in the night.....

I can never say no to a furry face, so along with the four humans in this house (well, three waiting for the fourth to return!) we also have five cats. In order from oldest to youngest....




That's Claire - my crazy kitchen cat. She rarely leaves the kitchen and while she loves to curl up in a lap, she's also rather fond of burying her teeth in your skin. She came from a farm and she's always been a little off.




Next we have Moly. He was "Molly" until I discovered that I did not have a female kitten after all - it was too late to change his name though, as he knew it, so I just dropped an L and kept pronouncing it the same way. He's known as "Mr. Moly" at the vet - and anyone from Homeschool Spot may recognize him as my avatar kitty. Moly loves to give kisses on the nose and does stand up tricks to get your attention. My best friend Norm found Moly as a kitten, running around in the parking lot of a local coffee shop. He likely came from one of the feral groups out behind it.



Then there's Max. Max is part dog. If you can't find something, Max has probably run off with in his mouth and hidden in the air exchange vent. Max came to live with us after a lady from a local island message board posted that she needed a new home for him as her youngest turned out to be allergic. He's my alarm clock - every morning at about 6am, he starts biting whatever body part is poking out of the covers.




This is Angel. Angel is Papa's baby and is waiting patiently for him to return so they can curl up together on the couch again. She's quiet and mild mannered, the 'mom' of the bunch, and spends a lot of time curled up in Christopher's little lawn chair. Angel came from a litter of kittens had by a cat that lived with a family on another street here.



And then there's Toby, the cat who came from the flea market last year after he curled up in Cindy's sweater and fell asleep. I don't have a closeup head shot of Toby yet, but this one works fairly well. Toby is half asleep. Toby has always been half asleep. I've given up trying to wake this cat up and have just accepted the fact that I have a dopey cat who's always going to suck on my clothes and walk into walls.

Meow! >^..^<

Cornmeal mush, mystery solved, overbooking.

Part way through a chapter of Little House on the Prairie (we're near finished reading it), Miss Cinders asked me what this "cornmeal" that they'd been using was (in the book, it's mentioned several times as something that they used in cooking - making 'mush', making cornmeal cakes, etc), and as I had some cornmeal in the cupboard, I showed her. On the back was a recipe for making the mush (as a breakfast), so of course she wanted to put down the book and go try it out.










It didn't really look all that appealing -- and it tasted just about the same.





BLECH. GROSS. We both agreed LOL

Actually, it reminded both of us of the "Cream of Wheat" hot cereal that you can buy - something else that neither of us like.

The stuff that congealed in the pot for a bit as we worked on some math, however, might have been useful for hanging shelves.


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The mystery of the dusty plastic bits was solved on the telephone last night. The square thing is some type of old antenna and can be turfed; the little piece is required to use the remote control for the PS2, which Blair has with him in Alberta (the system, not the remote). That needs to be saved in case I next find the actual remote control.

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I glanced at the calendar today and realised that Christopher has an appointment with the ENT guy this afternoon - right near Cindy's drum lesson time. An attempt at a reschedule didn't go anywhere, as the next appt they have for him wouldn't be until the end of the month and one of his tubes might not be in it's proper place, so my lovely friend Diane has offered to come and fetch Miss Cinders from the medical center and take her to her lesson. Hopefully (fingers crossed) the doc will be done with my little guy before her lesson is over, because Diane has a staff meeting to attend and can't really pick her up. If the doc hasn't seen him by then (pleeeeeease let him be running somewhat on time!) we'll have to bail and take that later appt. I'm very good at double booking things like this. ARGH. :-P

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There's a notice up on the board at a nearby store about Kung-Fu classes for kids - as Miss Cinder's gymnastics finished this past weekend, I might drop them an email about this class - it's also on Saturdays. I asked her if she'd be interested and she replied "learn how to kick butt? SURE!" ... of course.

I should google and find out what the difference is between the various martial arts... the only one that I'm really familiar with at all is karate - and all I know of that is what I learned from the classic 80's movies. Yeah you know it - wax on, wax off. *grin*

Happy Birthday Daddy!

A special video for a very special guy waaaaaay out west!



We love you!!! <3



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PS: after you watch that, can you tell me what the heck these dusty things are? I found them when I took everything off the tv stand thingamajig. All they are to me is dusty plastic... stuff. LOL .. What are they? Do we need them?

Much better looking!

That was in the midst of the second coat - a special message included there for a certain someone who reads this blog (though he saves his comments for the phone LOL)




The living room is finished! Though I can't quite get the colour to show true in the photos.. It's close though - but blue-er in person. It looks too white in the pictures... ...Oh and the shiny spot on the opposite wall isn't actually there - it's just from the window.

Speaking of windows - that window had a lot of tape residue on it from Christmas lights (yeah, I learned the hard way that using packing tape and duct tape to stick Christmas lights to the window wasn't the brightest idea) and I finally managed to get that crud off the glass. Most of it anyway. And, as of 5 minutes ago, there is now a set of navy blue curtains hanging on that window. (What *was* there was a set of green with flowers that I was never keen on but as my mother made them, there they hung for three and a half years or something like that. She knows I'm changing the room though, and doesn't mind at all that they've come down.)

I'm not positive about the navy blue curtains.. they're a bit small for "living room curtains" - and just plain old navy blue. I'd have liked a bit of a pattern... but these were on sale at walmart for $22.97 (for both panels - many of their curtains are sold individually and $15 or more for ONE panel) ... I'll let them hang there for a day or two and see how I feel about them.. If they start to make me frown, back they can go. (I can't take a photo of them now because it's getting dark and it won't turn out - that's another thing this living room needs.. more light! We just have one little lamp with a 40w bulb in it.)

Painting really is a lot of work! I gave Miss Cinders and extra $10 on top of her allowance for helping - which she immediately spent on a pink hat with little glittery stone thingamajigs.

Now, to try and get the furniture where I want it...

Flat Cowboy

A flat cowboy arrived at our house yesterday, all the way from San Antonio, Texas! The kids wanted him to join them for breakfast, so we set him up on the table with his own pancakes - and as he's quite flat and doesn't stand well on his own, we propped him up against a cactus there. Cactuses - cacti?? - are the only sorts of plants that survive in this house because the cats aren't quite silly enough to try eating them. Usually.


If you're wondering what on earth a "flat cowboy" is... Have a look at the wikipedia entry for Flat Stanley. :-)

This one is a flat cowboy because, of course, he's from Texas!

A family from Homeschool Spot created some Flat Cowboys and when they asked who would like to host one, we offered, and he arrived yesterday, all tucked safely in a big brown envelope. The kids think he's pretty cool and have been making suggestions for where we could take him for some good photos and journaling to send back with him when he returns home.

It's still partially winter here, so unfortunately we won't be able to take him to the beach or out Cavendish way, but there's still lots of places to go and things to do for him to have some interesting trip mementos to take back to his owners. :-)

Now, I still have painting to do. Cuz I got lazy last night. :-P

Paint & purrs

The first coat is done in the living room - wowsers, painting is a LOT of work! :-o

Miss Cinders was a tremendous help - I'd still be painting if it had been just me doing it... she's quite capable of using rollers and brushes and all and did a lot of work herself!





Toby had his visit with the vet - he wasn't very impressed with the whole thing LOL but he got a clean bill of health, a needle with various immunizations, and an appointment booked for March 20th to be neutered (The last thing I want is a spraying male in the house!).... We'd decided to just wrap him in a towel and Cindy would hold him on her lap, rather than going to fetch Diane's carrier, since the vet is only a couple minutes drive away, but he wasn't too willing to settle for her so I ended up driving with a bundle of cat in my own lap. Meow.




Miss C retrieved her chemical'ed dress which is now safely tucked away in - scratch that! She just came down wearing it. In the painted living room. RAWR. Rather firm instructions to put it BACK in the closet until Sunday (it's a dress for church) comes around. *grumble*




The stuff says 6 hours between coats, but how the heck do you count that - I mean, it took several hours..so technically, part of the living room has had it's paint for that long and I guess i *could* start the second coat... by the time I get to the later-done areas, they'd be near at their six hours as well. Hmmm. I think I'll do just that.. sure would be nice to have it finished in one day!

Time for a little colour!

In typical spur-of-the-moment style, we've decided to paint the living room and Cindy's bedroom :-) ...First, it was just to be the living room, but then Miss Cinders requested in that way that 11 year old girls have of asking - y'know, the puuuuuhhhhlease????? *big eyes* pleasepleasepleeeeeease??? - if she could have hers become something other than boring old white and seeing as how she'll be working on the living room with me, how could I say no?

Do I know how to paint walls? Not really. But hey, you pour the paint in a plastic..thing.. and you roll it over the walls. How hard can it be? :-P

The colours aren't really bright - because we rent, and while the people who own the buildings don't mind much, they prefer that people use a light colour that can be painted over with white again later, since that's what they always do when people move out. They're pretty though :-) ... The colour cards in the photo don't show quite true - my camera is fussy in low light and we only have a 40W bulb lighting up the kitchen at night...

The living room is to become "Caribbean Mist" and Cindy's room will be "Purple Lace" (the names of the colours are very nearly blech-inducing, but they themselves are pretty)...and of course, we can't wait until next week when we'd have more spots of time, we have to start it tomorrow in between taking Toby to the vet and retrieving Miss C's dress from the dry cleaners (not something we normally do - she found a dress at a thrift shop and it turned out to be a dry clean only kind, so it's off being chemical'ed to death). We'll continue over the weekend (it takes two coats for each room) while trying to keep the cats from brushing against it and Christopher from trailing the wet walls....He'll be painting a bit with us as well when he gets home from school, and Cindy's friend Kyla may join in when she comes over too - since along with the painting plans, Cindy is having a sleepover. Of course. We couldn't just do one thing at a time here, nope.

I've taken down the few wall things we had up, including an old wooden shelf that my grandfather made and a .... oh what do you call those things - the crafty things made with bits of yarn, kinda like rugs.. hook rugs? hooker rugs? Something like that. Blair made this one years ago - it's a white tiger that stares down at you, quite pretty, but very dusty, as I discovered when I removed it from the wall! Whoosh, went the dust - I contemplated trying to wash this creature in the machine, but out of fear of it falling apart, I'll just take it outside and whack it with the broomstick handle. There wasn't much else on the walls - the wooden shelf, however, still had some Christmas decorations sitting on it. Yeah I'm a bit slow with the whole 'time to take down the season' thing.

I figure, shove the furniture away from the walls and toss some old bedsheets over anything I'd rather not have speckled with bits of paint, then go at 'er.

Yay colour!

(I'm filing tomorrow under 'life skills' - not that I have to file anything under anything, but I keep some records anyway and I figure that this type of activity goes quite well in that sort of broad category, yes?)

Links from comment section (Ganeida)

as per the comment section on the last post, here's the links that didn't work there - dunno why it cut them off like it did....

ancient egypt

sled dogs

First completed lapbook

So we decided to take a swing into lapbooks (I have some thoughts related to this that I'll write about in another post) around here, and Miss Cinders chose to do one on dogs - she's very VERY "into" dogs lately {despite this being a house of cats LOL} and when I saw one on dogs at Homeschool Helper , I thought she might enjoy it... sure enough, duck to water.

This particular lapbook is "youngish" in ways, but I'm teaching a child who is working several levels back (well, if one were to use the 'grade level' terminology from public schools) in some areas - more on that in another post - and it was a great fit with her interests. (And after all, isn't a big part of homeschooling all about being able to work with where your child actually *is*? MmmmHmmm.)

I can't believe how focused she was while doing this though - this is a child who often has a very short attention span, and here she was very involved in finding out everything she needed to answer the questions asked of her. She was researching online (with me - I don't allow her to search unaccompanied because of all the crap out there), checking books, asking questions of me and of a dog owner we know, all sorts of stuff, because she was interested and wanted the information.

Of course, the cutting and folding and arranging and gluing is all stuff she loves doing too LOL .. She has some stickers she still wants to put all over it, she told me.

Anyway, here's some pictures of her Dogs lapbook....





Those show the different sides of the folders, with the various flaps and flips and stuff all attached..the flower arrangement with the different categories of dogs and example from each, that was meant to be a little stapled booklet - Miss C. wasn't having that though and insisted that they'd make a great flower.. she was right :-)





If you look in the first picture, you can see a pocket that holds cards (the cards are out in the photo) - each card is about a famous dog.. One of Cindy's favourite famous dogs is a Golden Retriever/Chow cross named Faith. Cindy learned about her through a book that I bought the other day, one of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not books, called "The Remarkable Revealed". (I don't know how to do those funky little amazon links that are on some blogs, where they're shown in a neat little box). We did some googling and discovered that Faith has her own website too, with pictures and video. Pretty amazing dog!



There's a photo of the entry Cindy spotted in the book. :-)





Cindy's favourite breed is the Golden Retriever, so it's no surprise that she wanted to include this fella - he's an actor-dog and played the role of Shadow in Homeward Bound, the movie based on the book called The Incredible Journey (well, I haven't read the book in YEARS - though it's one our list, to come after Little House is finished - so I'm not sure how true to the book they kept the movie.. I know they changed the characters up a bit for sure).

As you can see in the first photo, she also included Balto, Sam, and Uno.





Those two don't require much in the way of explanation LOL. She can't wait until the day that we move out to the country (some day!) so that she can get a Golden Retriever. I have to admit, they're my favourite breed as well. :-)






For the puppy supplies flip thing, we went off to Walmart and she went through all the supplies and took down the price for them - I think for a bit, she forgot that this was for her lapbook and not for a REAL puppy because she said a couple of times "I bet he'll love this!" .. yeah, I bet he will.. in four or five years! LOL ....

This was a GREAT little bit to do though because when we came home and added all the prices up on our big whiteboard, she realised just how much money is involved - and that wasn't counting the cost of any vet visits ;-)

Hmm, I see an apostrophe that shouldn't be there. Missed that! LOL






That's her cover - I'll bet you can guess what breed that is on the bottom right LOL

There's lots of other little flippy things - she went hunting for the answers to questions such as "Why do dogs pant?", how to interpret their body language, how their ears differ from ours, anatomy, what makes them mammals, and lots more stuff.. lots of skills involved in these lapbooks - reading, writing, organising, research skills (book and internet), comprehension, math (math may not be in everything, but it was for this, with the puppy supplies list involving money)..

We've got more lined up - this one came together very quickly, due in part to it's simplicity and the other part to her focus and wanting to "keep working on this!" - including dolphins and tigers (the dolphin one is a bit more indepth and we're working through a thematic unit on dolphins & planning to build a dolphin underwater thing, so that'll be done along with that) and some others that I'll babble about later.

>^..^<