The birthday boy!

Another great happening in April involved this young man....
Jeffrey's 12th birthday! Of course the day started out like this....

I keep thinking one of the years, one of the boys is going to think this whole birthday set up is lame! But it never happens. So we'll continue to reuse the Hobby Lobby banner from about 1000 birthdays ago and the crepe paper that never seems to run out!

He's so glad to be 12! I still have found myself telling people that he's 11. He seemed like he was 11 for sooooo long, like nearly 400 days straight!

As is customary, Jeffrey got to choose the meals for his birthday. He chose Shipley's donuts for breakfast. They've opened one in San Antonio about 20 minutes away, so we went before church. Not as great as the "mother ship" in Bryan, but other Shipley's never are, so we kept our expectations appropriately low. Even a "not as good as" Shipley's donut beats out just every other donut! After church, Jeffrey decided that he wanted grilled chicken thighs, hamburgers and hot dogs for his main birthday meal. No problem! Except......we didn't have a grill. Well, that is to say, we HAD a grill, it just wasn't assembled yet. (Our other grill had been taken to its final resting place...the dump!) So, as a part of Jeffrey's birthday present, Jonathan, Jeremy and Michael assembled the grill!

Jeffrey's birthday cake this year was a little different. Yes, it was an ice cream sandwich cake, but with a twist. Jeffrey wanted me to get Blue Bell mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches to use and put Junior Mints as the candy. However, I couldn't find mcc ic sandwiches, but I did find "moo bar" type things w/ m.c.c. ice cream. We pulled them off of the stick (ate what got left ON the stick) and mashed them in with some regular ice cream sandwiches. The result......YUM YUM YUM! Maybe my favorite yet!

We tried forming a #12 out of Junior Mints, but the whipped cream was a little uncooperative.

Jeffrey couldn't wait to light the candles.

And blow out the candles!

We are so proud of the awesome young man Jeffrey is becoming! Happy Birthday, Jeffrey!!

More April happenings...surgery and twimpathy

I can't believe April is almost over! It's flown by and I have still so many happenings that went on in April that I need to blog about. So look for new blogs over the next week or so.

Hands down, one of the biggest things that happened in April was Jonathan's knee surgery. Over 2 years ago we noticed that Jonathan had an osteochondroma (the fancy medical name for "bony thing-y") growing on his knee. The pediatric orthopedic dr. we went to didn't want to remove the growth while Jonathan's knee was still growing, as long as it wasn't hurting Jonathan. A few months ago, Jonathan started consistently saying that his knee was hurting, especially after basketball games and practice. I made an appt. with the dr. on Wednesday and after x-rays deteremined that the growth plate was pretty much fused, we decided to do surgery on Monday.
Jonathan was glad to have the surgery planned so he didn't have a lot of time to think about it. Just get'er done!

(Ok, in your mind and as you are reading this blog...put this picture down below when I 'm talking about "twimpathy". Can't get it to move where I want it to!)

Here's the "before". Don't know if you can really tell, but the bony thing-y was getting really large. And notice that scrape on his knee, complements of tough basketball defense by Jeremy on the driveway! That scrape was nearly a "deal breaker" for the surgery. Michael said that the dr. was very concerned that the scrape was so near where the incision was going to need to be. Now THAT would have been a bummer to go through all the rigamaroll from the week before, get up at 5 a.m. to drive to the hospital for surgery only to find that you have to go home b/c your brother played too rough!! Thankfully, the surgery went ahead as planned!!

Jonathan said that he doesn't remember much of anything from the surgery. He did remember that the nurse doing the IV missed on the first try! And then another nurse came and gave Jonathan "happy juice" (gotta love being at a Children's Hospital!) and then he remembers waking up in recovery. Jonathan said that Michael told him that he was awake when he was wheeled back into surgery, but Jonathan doesn't remember any of it. The funny thing was the first thing he remembers from recovery was hearing the "beep...beep...beep" from the heart monitor. He remembers looking around to find it, b/c he thought it was so cool. (It was also one of the first things that Jeremy asked about... "Did you hear the beep beep machine?!") Thankfully, Jonathan woke up very quickly and within an hour was on his way home.

Here's a blurry picture of the bony thing-y. Michael said it was almost as big as the palm of his hand. The part that we could see bulging on the side of Jonathan's knee was just the top part. I couldn't believe how big it was! Jonathan and Jeffrey were both VERY bummed that Jonathan couldn't bring the tumor home! Truthfully, I was thinking it would have been a cool specimen to have in a jar...I mean I'm teaching biology next year! But you know those hospital folks...gotta send it off to the lab.

So now, Jonathan's knee looks like this....

He's got to wear a knee immobilizer whenever he moves around for the next couple of weeks. He's supposed to bend and straighten his knee just to keep skin from growing over his stitches and keep range of motion in his knee. He's feeling very well now, but is growing increasingly bored with reading books and watching tv!

And then as if one injured boy wasn't enough, I was on my way home from a dr. appt. on Tuesday when Michael called and said "You'll probably need to take Jeremy to get an x-ray for his ankle, he thinks he may have broken it". Lovely! Jeremy was doing some jump training for basketball and was doing a move where you jump on and off a chair one foot at a time. According to Michael, Jeremy heard it snap when he landed wrong on it. And after an hour or so, Jeremy was reporting not dull pain, but sharp pains in two places, one being the spot where he broke his ankle last fall. When I got home, Michael had to leave to have dinner with a supplier. I left Jonathan, Jeffrey, Josiah and the Wii to take Jeremy to an urgent care center in Castroville. Two hours later, we find out that Jeremy's ankle is just severly sprained and not broken. His ankle was put into a splint and he was told not to bear weight on it for 3-5 days.

This whole experience caused me to coin a new word "twimpathy". Jeremy's right ankle, Jonthan's right knee....conicidence?? Nope...twin sympathy...twimpathy. So for three nights now, Jeffrey and Josiah have been sleeping up on the bunk beds while Jonathan and Jeremy (and their crutches and splints) have been sleeping in Jeffrey and Josiah's room.

Jeremy is able today to walk around, but still wearing the splint. I'm really ready for those guys to be up and around! I knew they were helpful, but I'm realizing even more and more just HOW helpful they are! Makes me thankful in a large way that this is not normal!

Spring cleaning

The flowers aren't the only sign that spring is springing around our place! I've got spring cleaning on my mind!! One day last week, Michael asked me to have the boys "straighten up the garage". Yes, that alone sounded like a monumental task. Very amibiguous as well. I mean, straighten the garage. What exactly does that mean? Move the piles of junk around so one can walk? Sweep the floor that can be spotted? Find a place for everything? a place for anything??Here's what we were looking at...

Junk, and lots of it! I told the boys we were just going to spend a few mintues straightening the garage. One of them said "Wow, wouldn't it be great if we could clean it out so daddy can fit his car in??!!". That was all it took! We were all on board with a mission. Let daddy do what he hasn't been able to do in 12 years....put his car in the garage! So, after two hours, a trip to the food bank, Goodwill and the recycle center, here's what we had....

The van is parked on the side of the garage that has always had boxes of stuff. Notice the curious look by the goats. They thought we had cleaned out a special place just for them! NOT!!

This part of the garage is where I used to park the van. Now it is where Michael can park his car!!!!

WE CAN'T WAIT FOR DADDY TO COME HOME!!!!

We really were all sooooo excited for Michael to get home and show him what we did! I thought he might cry when he saw it! He did tell me that he thought about sleeping outside in the garage that night. We totally understood b/c many times during the afternoon, Jonathan and I would walk out to the garage, just to look at it! And now one week later, it's still clean!

Da Memory Master is IN DA HOOOOOOOUUUUUUSE!

So,for the last year...well, it's really only been 24 weeks, it just sometimes FEELS like a year!...we've been memorizing LOTS of facts in Classical Conversations. According to the classical model of education, kiddos in the elementary grades have brains that are made to memorize, memorize, memorize. In junior high, they get more information to add the "how" to the "what" and in high school get the "why" to add to the "how" and "what". But for Jeffrey and Josiah's classes this year it's "just the facts ma'am, just the facts".

So at the end of the year, any student who wants to can recite all the facts he has learned to his tutor (it's what they call the teachers in CC) and if they get everything right, they have earned the right to be called a Memory Master. And just to give you an idea of the amount of information, it takes between an hour and an hour and a half just for the tutor to hear the student recite all the information.

Here's what they learned:

24 history sentences- No "See spot run" in these sentences. Here are a couple "As the Heien gov't weakened in Japan, shoguns began to rule and expel all foreigners during the period of isolation. Circa 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry of the US restored trade, allowing the Meiji to modernize Japan". Ever heard of the Heien government or the Meiji? Nope, me neither! How about this sentences "During the Age of Imperialism, the British established rule over India in 1858 and Queen Victoria was declared the Emperess of India in 1877. Assassinated in 1948, Mohandas Ghandi and his passive resistance movement helped win India's independence". There's 24 of those!!

All the prepositions, linking verbs and helping verbs and the definitions of each.

All the presidents, in order.

24 weeks of science facts-Things like "What are the invertebrate classifications?" "What are some types of clouds", "What are some types of oceans floors?" Each answer usually had 5 parts, some a little more, some a little less.

Latin - All 5 declensions, singular and plural

24 weeks of math facts-times tables up to the 15s, as well as the squares and the cubes and math formulas including the areas of square, triangle, rectangle, circle, circumference of the circles and the associative property, commutative property, distributive property, the identity law of mulitplication and addition

24 weeks of geography-the tutor would say something like "The Hittite Empire" or "African Waters" or "Mesoamerica" and you have to say the 5 locations (countries, towns, bodies of water, etc.) that go with that empire or location and put them on a map.

And if that wasn't enough information...

there were 160 timeline cards that you have to recite...obviously in order, it IS a timeline.

Thankfully, there were songs to most of the information! Songs really help memorizing!!! But songs or no songs, we have a Memory master in our midst....

WAY TO GO JEFFREY!!!! That is AMAZING! Jeffrey had as one of his goals this year to become a Memory Master. There were times he was tempted to give up and forget about it, but he hung in there and did it!! He got a cool t-shirt and will get a medal with his name engraved on it on Monday at our last class.

This is Jeffrey's last year in the Foundations program, so his only chance to become a Memory Master, so we are so proud of him for seizing this moment!

Josiah's already said that he's going to go for MM next year! Great example, Jeffrey!

Spring, spring, spring

To quote a line from a song from one of our favorite movies "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"

"Well, the barnyard is busy, in a regular tizzy
And the obvious reason is because of the season.
Ma Nature's lyrical with her yearly miracle....
Spring, Spring, Spring"

I've sung this song to myself so many times over the last few weeks. The wildflowers (esp. bluebonnets) are out like crazy around our property. We've NEVER seen them out like this before. And it's BEAUTIFUL!!! These pictures really can't do it justice and now there are purple flowers and yellow flowers and white flowers and even some red ones mixed in with the bluebonnets. It's like a Monet painting, but in real life! Here's some glimpses of the lovely spring going on around our place....

Lovely isn't it!

Echolocation-not in service!

If it was....do you think you would end up here! Stuck between the screen and the window of my closet? So, let me back up. I went into my closet (which has a lovely window!) and saw something on the screen. At first I was thinking "What on earth??" "Is it a frog?" (Ok, I know that doesn't make any sense. I mean this thing was on the screen about 7 feet from the window sill which means probably 14 feet from the ground below. This wasn't a rational moment-it was strictly, critter ID!) Jeremy was coming in behind me and said "Oh, dog it's a bat!" ("Oh, dog"???Where did that come from? Rest assured, such horrible slang has been removed! :-) ) Of course all the boys hustled outside to see what was going on-and of course, I sent them with a camera and watched from inside!



So, turns out the screen on my window has a slight bend in it(Wonder who caused that?? Hmmm, just guessing it had something to do with the crew that just flew out of doors to get a closer look at the bat!) Just enough I guess for his guy to fly through and get stuck.



Jeremy took off the screen and lowered it down to the ground. Yep it was a bat! But it looks an awful lot like a mouse..with some wings on the side.

Of course, it's not enough to just look at the bat at this point. The bat must now be shaken off of the screen to see if it can fly!

So now the bat opens its wings and falls to the grass...

Look at that thing! Yuck! And just so you know, I was reminding them....don't touch it! It might have rabies! (See dad, I remembered what you said before! :-) ) So they're all hunched over looking at it and taking some pictures. They were thinking that it was probably hurt or maybe even dead....or maybe close to dead....

NOPE! Not dead...not even close. Mr. Bat turned around and gave Jeremy a little greeting. Doesn't look like a friendly, does it??

Well, the boys proceeded to pick it up with a stick and transfer it to a "safer" location i.e. one where the chickens or goats (or Jackson) wouldn't find it and possibly try to eat it.

They put it in the front flower bed. And shocker! It was gone just a few minutes later.

Jeffrey has since seen another couple of bats flying around at night. I don't mind, b/c they eat mosquitoes, they just need to STAY OUT of my closet...and away from my screens!

And now, the boys' turn....

When we found out for sure that Julie wasn't going to be able to run in the race, and I was moaning about not wanting to have to be hanging out alone at the starting line, Jonathan and Jeremy-being the sweet boys they are-volunteered to run the half marathon with me. Mind you,this was just about 3-4 weeks before the race! No way, they need to train, right? Truth be told, I didn't want to KNOW that they could run a little for a couple of weeks and then come out and beat dear ole mom who's been pounding pavement for months! However, I DID think they could run the 5K and do it brilliantly. And brilliantly they did! Their race "training" included going out a couple of times a week for a quick 20-25 min run (well, that and basketball practice for 2 hours a day 3-4 days a week!) And their race times were amazing. Jeremy ended up 15th and Jonathan 23rd out of over 600 runners! I think Jeremy ran the 5K in 19 minutes and Jonathan in 22! Amazing!! Jeremy even got his name in the paper as one of the top finishers!! Imagine how well they could do with a little race training!! So, now I think they are hooked as well. That kind of success really makes the effort seem worth it! Way to go guys! You did an AWESOME job!!!
Jonathan and me before the races

Jeremy and me

Here's Jeremy burnin' up the street! Look, he's flying!!!

Jonathan's gettin' it done! And even has a smile on his face! I think he's thinking "I KNOW I can take that old guy in front of me!"

Jonathan nearing the finish line!

Way to go guys!!!