Mornings here usually go a bit like this: I get up around 5 or 6am, go into Christopher's room and turn on his music for him (he has a cd player with some cds I made of his fave tunes), wander downstairs to make my coffee, take it out on the step for a bit, come in and muck around online a little, start laundry, etc... while Miss Cinders is snoring away - if she had it her way, she'd sleep clear through to 9am or later, sleepyhead that she is.
This morning, after turning on Christopher's tunes, I went in her room - turned her clock around so she couldn't see the numbers, and woke her up as if it was later....heh, she near clobbered me when she turned the clock and saw that it was actually 6:10am. *grin* ....After digging her out from under her blankets, I convinced her to get up and come outside for a coffee with me - well, the intention was to make her a hot chocolate, but we discovered there wasn't any left, so I made her a kid-coffee.... way more french vanilla cream than coffee, several heaping spoonfuls of sugar. ;-) (my attempt at making it somewhat palatable for 11 year old tastebuds)
[Note: I don't encourage the consumption of coffee for kids, so don't blast me LOL ..in the absence of the hot chocolate, I had to make *something* hot in a mug]
[she didn't really like it that much as it turned out - but she was tickled at the idea]
I took her outside on the back step to show her why I like to be up at early hours..
Sure, I don't have the field or ocean view that I'd like (yet) and there's a lot of houses in the way, but you can still watch the sun come up. :-)
And admire the pretty dew on the grass. :-) ...She asked me if it had rained last night and I said no, explaining what dew is.
She thought the sun was very pretty, the dew was "cool", and the slugs (sorry, no photo LOL) that were on the path were "YUCK!" (I thought they were pretty cool looking myself - and smart. When I slid a leaf under one to lift it, he curled himself into a safe little ball.)
Perhaps if I pick up some more (better tasting to her) hot chocolate and skip pointing out the slugs, I just might be able to create a little morning person....maybe. She still looks half asleep on the couch beside me and it's a bit past 8am now.
If you have a cat (or several), go give them a hug and tell them how much you love 'em.
Yesterday, I had to pick up a cat that had been hit by a car - it was on the road next to ours, right in the middle of the lane. Cars were swerving around it, but I knew it was just a matter of time before it was run over again. I wasn't about to leave it there to have that happen.
I found a box in my basement, put a bedsheet in it, grabbed my gloves and a shovel (that sounds so coarse - but you can't just pick up a hit-by-a-car cat with bare hands) and got her off the road. I spoke with a lady who'd come out to see what I was doing and she said she thought the cat belonged to a doctor who lived nearby, but he wasn't home... so I told her I was taking the cat up to the vet center and I'd let them know to check their records and see if she was listed as his...I don't know if she was or not - I'm gonna call and check today.
She was a beautiful girl - a calico like my Claire, but with more white and softer fur...
If the vet wasn't able to locate her owner through their records, I'm gonna give her a name and tell them to file her under our records there or something.. it's sad to think of her just being "unknown female cat" or whatever. Yeah yeah, I'm a sap.
Miss Cinders and I took the material over to my mother's place while Christopher was out with his TA and, after shaking her head at my choice of coloursssssss, my mom helped Cindy and I make them. I love 'em! They'll match darn near any colour I decide to use in there, and - well, it's a rainbow! It's now just about impossible to frown in our kitchen. :-P
I've been neglecting my poor little blog here - but there are reasons! It's summer, for one, and that generally means a lot more running the roads. Visiting family, church stuff, beaches, camps, etc etc - along with trying to fix our broken RAWR car. Stupid thing refuses to start. As soon as it can be forced to do so, I'm selling it off. G'bye, nice knowin' ya, ciao. K, so it might not be *that* fast. I just don't trust it. It's shown some other problems (shifting troubles, for one) and I just don't have a very good feeling with this thing. We have the worst luck with cars, so this isn't really unexpected. ;-)
Beyond the busy busy life stuff, I've also been helping a four footed friend run his very own blog. If you click over there, you'll meet Charlie, Wheels, and Mister - the three felines who share a house with my cousin Norm and his commonlaw wife Diane. Norm works out west with Blair, and right now Diane is out there visiting them for a month (she's been away for about half that now) so her beloved Charlie-cat decided to keep a blog for her to peek in on while she's away. He knows how much she misses them and that even though she trusts her cat-sitter (hmmm, I wonder who that might be LOL), a month is a long time to be away from your pets-who-are-like-children... so, he started up a blog to amuse his Mama, make her smile from across the country. >^..^<
I'm also on a mission. I am going to make curtains - you have to understand that I can hardly sew at all, so this is indeed a "mission". I'm fed up with my sun faded, boring, dull kitchen curtains - but when I went out to look for new ones, I couldn't find anything that I liked. Well, I found something I sort of liked - but I wasn't about to spend $40 on something that only met "sort of". I started thinking about it and had a peek in the material section of Walmart - such pretty materials there! And on sale at that! Since I only use short ones across the top of my window, I can make them for about $20 using any of the materials I looked at. Much better - ones that I'll actually really like, and a lot cheaper. :-)
If they turn out, I'll put up a picture - ha, actually I'll do that no matter what. If I manage to screw up basic curtains, I deserve to be shamed. *grin*
Yay! The concert went off wonderfully! :-) ...The kids had a fantastic time, everyone played and sang and had so much fun. Oh my though, was it EVER hot in there! 100+ people crammed into our church plus a rather hot day equaled yikes! LOL
Of course I made videos. How could I not?
EDIT July 30th -- replaced the embedded google vids with links as they vanished for some reason.
Here's Christopher's solo - what he says to Mike after the "what kind of song" is "Not these!" .. What he was talking about was the other day when he forgot which part he wanted to sing and started with the first line ('These are the days'), rather than the chorus .. we'd been discussing it on the way in the car and I guess it was on his mind! Excuse the baby you can hear behind me LOL
Okay things are being weird and this one won't embed anymore - click here to watch it. :-)
He was *soooo* proud! (so am I!)
Here's a clip from when the junior band played "Everlasting God" -- now, keep in mind that these kids are 7-11 years old and 98% of them have never touched the instrument they're playing until this week. Every instrument you hear is being played by a child, some barely 7 years old. They sound pretty good for kids that have had five days of lessons apart and 1 day of playing together! Cindy's with the singing girls in the front, Christopher is playing his bongo drum. The song is "slowed down" from the original, had to be. ;-)
And, here's the junior group doing "High Performance Mind" -- they don't play in this, just sing and do the actions. I tucked Christopher right between Cindy (in the shorts) and Katie so that one of them could grab him if he stepped forward. (Just a few feet to the edge of the stage)...Cindy taught Christopher all the actions. ;-)
Fussy blogger/google videos.... click here to view the vid.. :-)
Here they are doing "Input/Output" (not many actions to this one, cute song though) ...watch Christopher toward the end - he stops the rocking/swaying and listens...because he knows what's coming. You'll see what I mean LOL.
Again. blogger is being fussy with the vids ... click here to watch. :-)
This little piggy went to music camp...
Cute eh? We found the pig hat in the toddler section of a store here for 5 bucks and snagged one of Cindy's pink t-shirts... tada, pig.
I have a few other videos - part of Cindy's skit, some of the older (12-17) group with a really cool song I liked - but I've lost my patience with video uploads for today. RAWR.
I posted yesterday, but my post got eaten... let's try this again..
This morning was the rehearsal - tomorrow is the concert. The kids are very excited - and it was quite neat to see the older group as well... There's two groups running this week - 7-11 years old in the morning and 12-17 in the afternoon. Since both of mine fall in the former, I've only been there for that group and hadn't any idea what the older crew was planning... they've got some lovely songs and skits! With them being an older group, most of them have more experience on their instruments, so they also sound a lot more... well, experienced LOL. Don't get me wrong, it's lovely to hear and watch the younger ones playing - but since a lot of them are playing an instrument they've never played before and have only had a week to learn, it's a little rough. ;-)
Christopher is making out quite well - he's made some friends there and he's having a wonderful time...The staff have been fantastic with him as well; I'm very impressed!
Check him out here, holding court! He was being his silly self, spelling words all mixed up (he loves to do that) and kissing the carpet and such, making the kids laugh - which of course he fed right off of and continued LOL
And here he is, up on stage with the others during a practice -- Cindy is up there as well, orange shirt on the right..
His drum is nearly as big as he is! It's a "bongo drum", we've been told. It's also not attached to the ground (of course) and Christopher, until yesterday, kept rocking the darn thing... I told him - repeatedly this week - "DON'T ROCK THE DRUM" because it might fall over... Christopher being himself, had to learn this the hard way. He did indeed rock the drum, again and again and then one time too many. The drum went sideways and over and he went along with it, right off the edge of the stage. *sigh*
He's fine - it's only a couple of feet and he's a tough kid - but it sure gave him a fright (and nearly gave the music camp staff heart attacks - they're not quite as used to his tumbling/tripping/walking into stuff/etc as we are..we've had years to get used to a rambunctious kid who can't see, they've had four days LOL) and he's very adamant now that he Will. Not. Rock. The. Drum. ;-)
He has a solo in the concert! Yep. One of the staff found out that Christopher's current favourite song is "Days of Elijah" and that his favourite *part* of the song, the part he likes to sing over and over again, is the chorus... and he (staff) set it up so that in between songs, Christopher gets to sing into the mic -- Christopher is SO excited and proud about this! (As are we all of course!) ....We've been working on singing the words clearly (he has speech issues) and loudly and he can't wait.
He's in a skit as well - as a pig! It's the story of the prodigal son and it's done without any lines... the narrator tells the story and the kids have to act the parts with no voice, just expression and actions.. there's a part where it says that the son ends up with a job for a pig farmer and Christopher plus a couple other little boys are the pigs. He's been working on his 'oink' and we have to try and come up with something piggish and pink for him to wear. If it was just closer to Halloween, I could prolly have found a piglet costume LOL.
The way this works for the younger group is that there's two songs for the "choir" (all the kids sing, music staff play instruments) and then two songs where the kids play their own instruments that they've learned to play this week (only five girls are singers for this part - Cindy is one of them) and then they do... three? I think? separate skits....
The choir songs for the younger group are called "High Performance Mind" and "Input/Output" (I/O was the 'theme' for music camp --- ie, what goes into your mind/life/etc is what comes out)....I've dug around online, but I can't find any vids of any groups doing these, just mentions of them... they're "kid songs" ....
The two songs they're playing are "Hosana" and "Everlasting God"...
This is Everlasting God:
And here is Hosanna - there seems to be several with this name, but this is the one that the kids are doing.
And the song that Christopher is singing the chorus from is this one:
Had to go to youtube for that one - there's various versions... this is the version we have in the car. :-)
On a completely unrelated topic, this is what happens when you have a smallish car and take three children with you to fetch flowers for a garden...
K, this one is for you guys..... Christopher is sleeping, Cindy's outside with Kyla and I'm ignoring the laundry using my free time wisely by browsing youtube for Fort Mcmurray videos :-P ...and I find....these.
[for anyone reading this with kids nearby - PG13 for language]
click and click (those two wouldn't embed, open new tab to view)
We even have this in....Russian? Norwegian? German? Something? LOL
K, so. You two were there in January.... did ya try it? Did ya????
Cindy went last year - this year, Christopher is also involved... and so far (two days in) it's going wonderfully. The two people in charge have been fantastic with him - they're aware of his disabilities and have been making sure he's included in the ways that work best for him. He's having a great time and his behaviour has been fantastic. He takes his behaviour wheel with him each day and is very proud of himself when he's kept his peg on the happy face all the way. :-)
Wanna quick peek into Christopher's world by way of a couple of items?
Behaviour Wheel = It's a cardboard wheel with three sections - each section has a different texture along with markings for what it means.. section one has a smiley face done in fabric paint, section two has "warning" in braille, and section three has "5 minutes" in braille {ie, 5 min time out} ..there's a clothes peg that is clipped on to whatever section is appropriate...His goal, of course, is to keep the peg on happy face all day and not have to have any consequences applied. He's SO proud of himself when that peg stays on happy face. :-)
He also has his tactile schedule - these sorts of things are done in various ways, depending on who makes them, what they're for, etc... for this week, it's pretty basic.. I took popsicle sticks and attached a braille label to each stick - the labels say: Arrival, Service, Choir, Break, Singing, Drama, Closing ... it's basically just a tangible thing that helps him understand the flow of the day, deal with transitions from one activity to the other, etc....It works like this: he keeps the stick for the current activity either on his person (hoodie pocket) or somewhere nearby, and when it's time for that activity to end, he trades it to me for the next activity stick. Tactile schedules can be designed in all sorts of ways - he's had ziplock bags that contained objects that represented activities, long blocks of wood with velcro and other items representative of activities that velcro'd on the block, removed when activity ended, and other sorts of setups... This one is pretty basic - had to be, it was a last minute thing because I didn't know what sort of schedule - or how much of one - there was going to be. It's working well though, he likes it.
Hmm...while I'm thinking about this - I just realised, I'd better put something in there with a "Change" label... on the chance that something in the schedule gets changed during the course of a day, it works well to have a special "change" item as well.
Anyway.
Music camp runs through the week (by 'camp', I mean day camp - this isn't overnight) and on Sunday, the kids perform for the congregation. They play instruments, sing, do skits, etc -- it'll be awesome. I'm hoping that - with some work - we can have Christopher prepared and able to be out on the stage during his times without having me right beside him. I think we can do it - it's a short time frame to have him ready for *that*, but we'll give it a shot.
She's talked nonstop since she got out of the car - about the floating dock in the lake and the leeches (haha - I never said anything to her about how lakes can have those...she's never swam in freshwater before this and I knew if I mentioned the possibility, she'd never step foot in it!) and the games and the crafts and contests and what a wonderful time she had.
Oh yes, and now if Christopher or I have our elbows on the table, we get a silly song sung at us and could end up sent outside to run around the building. :-P
Surprisingly, she only took a couple of pictures with my camera - they were mostly closeups of other people's faces LOL ... she did hand the camera over to someone else for two though:
(she's over on the left at the corner of the sign...and she said she drew the blue jay in the middle)
(the week was themed like the Survivor television show - "Ruthie" was their cabin's head counselor)
She brought home a CD that apparently has pictures - these were made by someone on the camp staff and given to all the kids - but I haven't loaded them up yet....
She had a wonderful time - and while I'm very pleased that she enjoyed it, I'm also very happy to have my daughter back! ;-)
Miss Cinders left for camp this morning - picked up early by another family with whom she's traveling....
Here she is, waiting outside with her stuff...
Three of the kitties came to the door to say goodbye.. (Toby and Cola are the ones you can easily see - Max is sort hiding behind Toby's head...)
She decided to make a quick video for Daddy :-)
She'll be away until Saturday...
This afternoon is the parade - Christopher and I are going to watch & listen, and I think Diane is coming along as well.... parades are always fun! Our church actually has a float (with a band on it) in the parade... that's how we found out about this church last year, actually... they handed out info to parade watchers about VBS and music camp. :-)
In our living room, there's a big toybox filled with all sorts of toys - most of which make all sorts of racket, from talking bears to fire trucks that go off in the middle of the night when a cat walks across the dash - and most of which belong to Christopher.....sometimes, I wonder why we buy this stuff.
This is currently one of his favourite things to play with - it's a plastic basket from the dollar store. Does he fill it with marbles, then dump them? Use it to carry things from A to B? Store lego in it? Nope.
He sticks it to his butt.
Yep. Everywhere we go lately, he wants to take this little basket so that he can play with it stick it to his butt. He thinks this is the funniest thing in the world. :-)
He was also rather amused recently when we were over at the park - his sister was off doing her own thing and he had nobody to ride on the "bouncy seats" with him....or so he thought.
If you give an 11 year old her very own digital camera for passing grade six, you can check the memory card later and find a lot of photos like this:
and like this:
and like this:
You can also find photos of random puppies:
Hello puppy, who are you and to whom do you belong? I have no idea...
There may also be cows-out-a-car-window....
And food from a meal out with a friend...
Now, if I snag her camera on Canada Day - because I've given her a better camera than I have myself and now I'm a lovely shade of green - you might find photos like these..
This one has a little tale...
That's a lighthouse that you can climb up (obviously), down at a touristy spot here...see the child in the pink t-shirt? I asked the group of them to get together for a photo and that child grabbed the railing behind her and pulled herself UP ONTO THE RAILING. gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I near died when I looked over, about to take the picture, and realised what she'd done...I don't know if the photo gives you an idea of how HIGH that is, but trust me when I say that falling over the railing backwards is a Really. Bad. Idea. She's not my kid but she sure got the MomLookOfDeath and a command to get the heck down and NOW. It still creeps me out to think about how easily she could have been knocked over backwards...have you ever overbalanced on a fence or anything? Soooo easy and it could have been as simple as one of the other girls bumping against her. *shiver*.
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In other bits of news, Miss Cinders is off to camp next week - a rather unexpected and last minute event. I got a call from one of the ladies at our church today about the and she said that there'd been some "camp sponsorship donations" for kids to attend the Nazarene camp over in Nova Scotia and asked if Cindy would be interested...I asked the little miss and she's all over it, quite excited - she's been to camp once before, Girl Guide camp, but that was tents and a very small group and fairly close to home....this is cabins & piles of kids & in a completely different province, bit different LOL.
Christopher and I may do some (tent) camping of our own while she's gone - it's also Lobster Carnival week here, starting Monday, which means parades and a midway and other fun stuff like that. :-)
The above is a perfect picture of how my computer was feeling this week. Monday, it went belly up - Tuesday was Canada day, so the computer repair places were closed - Wednesday, I hauled its sorry butt in to the computer fix it guys - Thursday, they'd worked their techie magic and repaired it, yay! Something about a corrupted windows file? I don't know, but they did and it works just fine now and - yay again - none of my 'stuff' appears to have been lost. Now, I really need to figure out how to "backup" all my stuff, as the next time we might be so lucky with that.
Wife to Blair,(step)Mum to 11 year old Cindy and 10 year old Christopher. Cindy is part-way through her second year of homeschooling after 5 years in public school; Christopher still attends, on his own specialized program that addresses his disabilities and is currently in a grade three class. We're a family from Prince Edward Island currently living in northern Alberta - we moved here just in time for the lovely warm winter. *grin*
