Happy Halloween and school update!

We had a very low key Halloween! We went to a friend's house and went around their neighborhood with some friends. I have to admit I love watching the kids dress up in costumes. It's really sad that the kids are starting to get old enough to start thinking about not *wanting* to go trick or treating. (Ok, not mine - they'll probably go until they're 23, but a friends kids are getting there.) I adore watching the kids get excited about.. Well.. SOMETHING. These 2 almost never jointly get excited about something so thoroughly. We've gone to this particular friend's house every year (except one when we were in Seattle) since the kids were.. 4ish? maybe earlier... She is always saying she isn't having anyone, but inevitably she has the BEST neighbors and the safest neighborhood!  (Plus, she's way cooler of a mom than I am - Just ask my girl!)

This year the kids picked 2 costumes. (Mostly, because I found the second one 40% off weeks before it was even time for them to be on sale and I say "Ok, sure if ya promise to let me dress you up and take silly pictures.")

The Boy:

 

The Girl:

 

   These two are about a grade ahead of their same-aged peers. They have both gotten a little lazy about school here lately - this is partially my fault, I haven't been pushing them like I should have been - but the laziness is over. I've set a deadline for each to finish their current grade level work (The Boy is in 3rd, The Girl 4th) by the end of this year. That gives them almost 6-7ish weeks to complete everything they've got left. It's completely do-able. Basically what each has to do is complete their math books, write a research paper (The Girl's is longer and a bit harder), and complete a book report (The Girl's is also a bit more in depth). Writing is difficult for both so they tend to slack in this area. Not understanding language arts, but the actual DOING of the writing. If they had to give a book report orally, they could do it instantly, but they need to be able to learn to overcome their inability to write well. Mean? Perhaps. But the *real* world doesn't care. I have told them they can type it if that's easier.

 Honestly, the whole issue with Common Core may make homeschooling easier because it will have common goals and have them clearly laid out. The books will all have the same goals, just formatted differently. It could be an easier thing than trying to figure out *which* curriculum is the right one. It could always come back and bite us all in the butt, but..



The Girl also had 2 more teeth pulled about a week ago. The dentist has hopes of being able to avoid braces if the teeth stay semi aligned because of the pullings we've had to do since they don't line up. She's does so well at the dentist. The Fairy leaves her some pretty good prizes too!

Pictures! At last!!

*SQUEE* I finally got the kids to hold still long enough to get some picture of them! Ok, I may have bribed them to hold still long enough. Whatever. I even got the Girl to brush that nasty hair of her so she doesn't look like a stow-a-way squirrel!

 The Girl. Looking relatively gorgeous even! 

The Boy. Playing with an ant. What else *would* he do??

Then, then I tried to get them to take a few pictures together and this is what I got:

 

 The Boy eating The Girl's brain. 

 The Girl thinking that The Boy being a Zombie is HILARIOUS..

 MORE hilarious laughter as the Zombie farted while eating The Girl's brain. (I kid you not, a loud deadly toot caused more laughter than a toot should EVER cause!)

All was giggles and grins until I said "Hey, can you stand NEXT to her and smile?" I *thought* it was a harmless request. I then got THIS gem:

Then this:

Oh and then this one where it looks like he's holding his breath. I think this time SHE tooted. Yeah. They're gassy. 

My favorite though?? This pearl. I should change their names to *Eye Roll* and *Stink Eye*  because that's what they've mastered here. I'm going to save this picture until they're about 15 &16 and want to go out on a date then pull this out when the boy or girl comes over. Because. Wow.  But look! They're both making eye contact with me AT THE SAME TIME! That never happens :p 

What a Weekend..

This weekend was wicked. Both kids have been puny. The animals have been wacky. It's the first day of Autumn.

Morely:

Monroe is *probably* in heat and we've had to separate her and her Adams which is turning out to be a very loud (ie they are barking in their sadness) endeavor. We do NOT want puppies right now - we are aiming for spring - so a necessary task.We've had to completely rearrange ALL the birds. They are currently all in the front chicken yard now, Adams is in the water fowl yard with Lambie, and Monroe is in the dog yard (since the inside dogs are both fixed). It's not ideal, but doable for the couple of weeks to make sure we don't have more babies right now.

We discovered about 5-6 ingrown pieces of rock/gravel/dirt/goo in The Boy's belly button that I had to physically remove with tweezers and actually DIG, dig out. It was NASTY. Only to find out he had *never* ever washed his belly button. Ewwwwww. Actually ingrown into the skin folds inside his belly button. I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to dig them all out. What an embarrassing thing to go to the doctor for! We had a lesson on how to bathe as well.

I got some fascinating news via Facebook that made me feel really fantastic about myself and my life choices as a person. I do enjoy watching other people's train wreck life choices to realize I am no longer required to be part of them. Ahh schadenfreude..

Both kids have been running a low grade fever for about 4 days now. I'm fairly sure it's just a long virus since my mom had the exact same darned thing and decided it was "an allergic reaction to the flu shot", but it's still no fun since they're super grouchy.

I managed to finally get some pictures taken of the kids.

I've been behind this year on pictures and they were both good sports about posing for me.

Oh Possum!

The house is all awake and a tizzy tonight from this:

This thing had snuck up to the house looking for tasty snacks. The outside puppies were doing their job and trying to get at it and kept barking at it - which they never bark - and we kept going out to see what was wrong. The first time the goat had jumped over to the duck yard but the second and third times we didn't see anything. The fourth time we saw Mr. Kitty (the stray that won't let us touch it) walking circles around this and this fella. Yeah. Eww.

Now, all 4 dogs are up and antsy, the kids are both up (because 1 was already up and I think she woke him up), my mom woke up with the in and outting and barking and rooster crowing.. And there are 2 roosters in the garage who think it's waking time. *sigh*

*My* method was to shoot it, but C said to just scare it off. He said gun shots at 4 am near town were *bad*. He never lets me have any fun. Unfortunately, I think it's come back (since the puppies are barking again)  and we're going to have to trap it and do something with it. I have no idea what you do with them after you trap them though.

School Continues

The kids are still taking swimming lessons and both have decided they really like taking martial arts classes at the local Rec Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Unfortunately, they are in the evenings. I hate evening classes. They make my life longer. BUT. It seems to be working out well so far. I figured out how to get the hotspot to work and can get a crap-o-matic movie to play on my laptop and VIOLA! and extra 1 1/2 two times a week to get paperwork, update this, the animal tracking done and all those other tasks I never seem to get to done. The instructors keep pestering me to *join* to which I just laugh almost hyena like and the never going to happen chances of that. Not only would I be the *oldest* my joints would literally fall apart. Literally.

I intended to get a few pictures of the kids here before too long, but there's no way to get that done without being too conspicuous. 

Other than that, there's not much new going on. They eat and grow. I've been lousy about pictures lately too. Really lousy.

I need to get the kids to get behind a picture day and then remind me to get my camera out several times a day.

Our school revamp seems to have worked really pretty well. If you discount the few days of cheating that is. They both decided that they should *only* have to do the work on the new Easy Peasy they WANTED  to do. Oddly, this didn't sit as well with me as they thought it should. The going back over the entire months worth of days and REdoing it all was a bit of a learning experience for them I suppose. I am now double checking all their work daily. They are still making the same amount of progress in Math, Science, English and Spanish but without complaining because of the added variety - which was the intention.  I've noticed a BIG difference in The Boy's abilities in time and money skills too - which his textbook works don't honestly focused much on (and neither had we..)  So they are learning something in it all.

School Revamp

We homeschool year round. The kids are about a grade and a half of where they are supposed to be in pretty much everything except handwriting. They are MASSIVELY behind there - and will probably never ever catch up. They both have dysgraphia and we've even been sending The Girl to occupational therapy (OT) to learn ways to strengthen her hands, learn new ways to teach her, typing programs, and other ways to help her circumnavigate this. We've been working with  The Boy on these things as well because you can't read either of their handwriting STILL. Well, come to find out (and I had a suspicion) a couple of weeks ago as I was asking Girl some questions about what she was doing in OT because the report from her therapist had been rather vague. That "it's SO fun" but she wasn't *learning* anything we weren't already doing at home and HAD NOT been the entire time was what I gleamed from the conversation. I asked her about several aspects of things that she could be missing. Nope. She wasn't missing them. They just weren't being done. Our insurance doesn't cover OT really at all so we've been paying out of pocket for it. Which, if they are teaching her things and is beneficial, I don't mind one single bit. BUT. I do not want to pay $120 a week for a glorified babysitter to play games with my kid to teach her jack shit. I can pay myself to play with her. I love the OT we use. She has helped us a tremendous amount where it comes to The Girl's sensory issues, behavioral issues, stimulation issues. But this is clearly NOT her best work. So, as of this week, we are again therapy free. And I broke up with them over email because I am a complete and utter pansy. So, instead of leaving my house every Wednesday at 2 to get home at 4:45 to 5 for a 1 hour appointment. (Yes, 3 hours for a 1 hour appointment.) we are now freeeeeee.(And $120 per week less spent.)

Both kids have also had medication changes within the last month. The Boy has gone from not talking to *anyone* but people in the family, to most people he knows. I'll take it! He'll actually go off and play with other kids almost like a real kid now.  The Girl stopped sleeping again so we changed her sleep meds and found out she grew and out grew her dosage levels of other medications so we upped that slightly. It's only been one day on that so hopefully she won't go all wonky and turn into the Poltergeist child permanently. 

But one of the biggest changes is their school. I keep wondering if I'm leaving something out of what I've assembled for them. Whether on accident or by my own biased and preferences. So we're trying an alternating schedule of what we had been doing for the last while - just dividing the full schedule up into slightly smaller bites, not even dividing the days in half - and adding in Easy Peasy Homeschooling in too. Because the work, even at their accentuated grade levels, is too easy for them on the Easy Peasy. But, from what I've seen so far, it focuses on some folk lore, story telling, and game playing so it teaches in a different method than what I normally use. It's a religious based instruction, but since it's online we can take and leave the parts we don't want.

The Boy spend his time on the math online puzzles today instead of Lego Star Wars on the Xbox. *shrug* I figure religiously based or not, I'm ok with it. Plus, I don't feel like I'm going to be leaving SO much out if they are getting things for another source as well. It all goes back to the inadequacy we all tend to feel this time of year when people all talk about *planning* and *curriculum* and such. They do SO well with what we've got set up, I don't see a reason to screw with it much. But they LIKE the computer a lot I figured we would give this a go. I don't want all their stuff on the computer. That seems... like a bad idea.. but if they'll do MORE because some of it's on there.. Ok.

The Blue Whale!

Yesterday we drove out to the Blue Whale on Route 66. I had never been, the kids had never been, and I kind of thought C was a little bit insane when he kept mentioning it. So, off we went. Ok, it really took us all of 25 minutes to get there but still. And Look:

A Giant Blue Whale. Seriously. I know right?

It used to be a sightseeing thing for Route 66. A swimming hole. Now it's a little bit creepy, but still.

 Of course The Girl thought it would be hilarious to be *eaten* by the whale. As you can see The Boy is a bit unsure about this whole thing.

 There were slides people used to go down, a diving place off the tail, climbing ladders up the side of the whale. Basically an embellished pier. There is fish and turtles in the pond now, but the water is kinda ewwy looking.

The banks are overgrown, but you can see where an old dock/pier is. I can see how this would have been a popular roadside stopping place during the Route 66 hayday. It's rundown now, but if it were upkept and busy it would loose that *creep* factor. 

Even the bathroom is whale themed. 

It's worth a visit since it's not very far from town. We spent maybe 10-15 minutes there, but the kids were in awe that it existed because it's just so weird. You can still walk out in the whale and look out in the pond and feed the fish and catch and release them - if you want. (We didn't.) But there was a lady with her little boy there who had brought some fish food and was feeding the fish and shared a bit with The Girl and she's been going On and On about it since.

And for your Monday Laugh:

Love that silly Boy..