End of School Year

Last Friday night, our homeschool coop did an end of school-year dinner together. We all brought some of 'show-off' pieces from the year and the kids got to get up and sing all of their songs from States Classes that they've been doing all year. Miss E has been a WONDERFUL teacher to teach all of our children all 50 states through this year! Wow....she is GREAT! About half way through the year, the kids started taking a state each and gathering the information and giving a presentation on each week. Brent did 3, and would have done more if he could have! LOL Here is a video of their States Song:

Recent Promotion...

The boys (as you may remember) were promoted recently to yellow belt at Tae Kwon Do. Well, the picture of it was in the paper a couple weeks ago and I got a color copy of it from the newspaper office! (They were REALLY nice about it!)

Our Tadpoles have legs!

Recently, a friend of ours was able to find a whole slew of tadpoles that we all divvied out and brought home to raise. We've had them in a container (probably equivalent to a 10 gallon aquarium) about half filled with water...there are 7 tadpoles. Slowly over the last few weeks, we've watched them grow in size. We feed them the boiled, frozen lettuce that we were told they liked. Well, yesterday we looked closely at them and noticed that they have legs! Their legs have officially sprouted and the more exciting parts begin happening now. (below is an example of what they look like.)

Well, then last night I was making more lettuce for them (boiling it) and I got distracted with Clayton. Next thing you know, I started catching whiffs of this burning smell. But I had the windows open, so didn't think much of it at the time. Then Terry comes back and says, "Did you mean for this thing you have on the stove to burn?" Well, DUH! Of course not! So I ran to the kitchen and saw that it had burned dry...only lettuce crisps were in the bottom of the pan and they were VERY black! Oy. So I set it aside and was worried about ruining my pan. BUT, thank goodness, this morning I was able to soak it and scrub it and it seems to be fine. :) Whew!

Hopefully soon I'll be able to post some pictures of what our frogs look like as they get bigger! :)

Update for the past week (Part 2)

...Continuation of update....

Also, while at the park, we happened to sit under a flowering tulip tree. I had planted a tulip tree when I was in 4th grade on Grandma and Grandpa's place, but I've never been around it when it bloomed. But this on we were under on Friday was really pretty. I got some pics of it too! (I know you're SO suprised by that!)







After we got home from the park, we made supper and ate...Terry actually got to eat at the table with all of us! :) I had made Mahi Mahi, so we had lemons with it and the boys decided to eat the lemons (which I still can't figure how they do that!) and they got a bit goofy with them. I just had to capture them on camera!









On Saturday, we got some things done outside (planting the trees in the garden, mulching the hostas, etc) and I got a bit camera happy! I took a couple of movies of the boys (below) and several pics of the 'scenery'. I just couldn't help myself! LOL


We just had to laugh at this next video!

This is a couple shots of one of my hostas in front of the porch! It's HUGE!

I took these next shots from my front porch about 6:30 that evening...the clouds were rolling in and it looked like it was gonna come-up-a-storm! It was really pretty....the camera doesn't do God justice!

Terry has gone back to work today and I'm thankful that he has. I needed him back at work as much as he needed to go! However, after talking with him this afternoon, I know he's already very tired (and a bit cranky!) and will most likely go to bed early tonight. So hopefully he's on the mend and our schedules can start to get back to normal! :)

Update for the past week (Part 1)

Well, I'm even gonna back up a bit more...The weekend of Brent's birthday we went to the circus. It was okay....kinda fun for the kids...the 'clowns' weren't really clowns...just really well-dressed people. But they were funny. There were a couple things that I didn't like cuz I thought they weren't appropriate for children, and let's face it...it IS a children's show. But other than that, it was very entertaining. I personally did NOT like the up-in-the-air trapeze stuff or the things that made you think they were falling, but the kids loved that part! Here are some shots. They are a little blurry at times, but you can still see what they are. The boys took a couple shots of me and Terry too! :)

The following week (May 8th) was Terry's surgery. You have seen the first update from that....I will provide another. On Sunday of last week (the 11th..Mother's Day!) he woke me up in the middle of the night saying he was bleeding. So, I got up and checked him and he continued to bleed all day long. I called the dr and left them a message for them to call us on Monday so they could tell us what was okay and what wasn't. They finally called back on Monday afternoon and suggested that he come up and be seen on Wednesday. So on Wednesday afternoon, we drove back to St Louis where the surgeon found another fistula going in a different direction! She went ahead and opened it there in the office and let it drain. She said the draining would slowly stop over the next week, but that we had to watch it for infection.

So far so good. No infection so far, but we're still watching it closely. Terry goes back to work tomorrow (he's already cleared to go back) and he's on restricted duty (lifting) for a month. My concern is that he will wear himself out in the first few days, but I know he needs to go back to work...for his sake and mine! LOL

This past week, while Terry was healing and while we figured out what was going on with the bleeding, mom stayed and helped me out... Well, literally she did most everything for me, cuz my brain was SO not with it! But we took some time to do some crafty things with the boys and I got the idea to do something we used to do at Six Flags: make sand people! :) So I went to Dollar General and found some jars with necks on them and came up with these:

On Thursday, we had a field trip to the Electric company...they explained to the kids how electric works, ways to save on electricity, and ways to be safe with electricity. Then at the end they gave each of the kids a new tree-sapling. :) The boys are VERY excited about that part....and have been looking all over town for those 'green boxes' where the underground cables are. :)

On Friday, Mom and I took the boys to the park to let them ride their bikes....it was really fun to watch them be able to just GO. At our house all they have is the driveway and with Brent's new bike, he needs more space to ride. Anyway, here are a couple of pics and a video of them playing.

Part 2 coming soon....

Terry's latest

Well, Terry had his 4th surgery today for his 'butt' issue. :) They put a plug in and the goal for it is to adhere to the tissue around it and then dissolve...hence closing the fistula. That's the goal anyway. He's more uncomfortable than sore at this point, but he's also very heavily medicated! LOL He's been given instructions to not 'scoot or sit' for a good long while. Perhaps up to a month...which could be interesting to say the least. He can only lay and stand at this point. So we'll see how long it lasts and how well he handles it all.

The boys stayed home with mom while Terry and I went to St Louis. They helped clean house and were so excited when we got home. They met us in the driveway and hardly let Terry out of the van! Mom will most likely stay here through Sunday, when dad will come get her. But that is all dependent on how Terry seems to be doing.

That's all for now....time for bed! What a long day! :)