Emotional Examples

Guilty as charged!

How many times have I allowed current stressful circumstances to lure me into thinking my present situation is more important than my boys' future???

How many times have I been annoyed by the the sounds or actions of my boys and then reacted out of fustration rather than realizing that my actions as a parent will affect the adult lives of my boys???

How often do we find ourselves reminding our children to speak respectfully to their siblings, us parents, and other adults ... then turn around and speak disrespectfully to them ... or to our spouse???

We see them throw a tantrum and with a contorted screwed up face we angrily exclaim ... YOU NEED TO CONTROL YOUR ANGER!!! UGGGGHH!!!

We tell our children that God does not want us to hold grudges or unforgiveness in our hearts ... and at the same time we are giving our husband the 'slient treatment' for telling us the truth ... when we didn't want to hear it.

Are we not also guilty of occasionally being too lazy ... or self-absorbed ... to discipline offenses in which we know we should??? Or just the opposite ... disciplining for "offenses" when were in a bad mood ... things we would normally not mind???

How often do we parents forget our focus??? We tend to focus on the now rather than the what will come. It's just too easy to get wrapped up in the overwhelming day to day of life and to convince ourselves that keeping up with the laundry or dishes or yard work or whatever is more important than training our children for their adult lives.

When we look at our daily behavior from the perspective of our children's future ... are we setting the right emotional examples for them??? Are we rearing emotionally sound human beings ... or creating little emotional train wrecks??? Annoying childhood behaviors can become detrimental adult behaviors if we don't "nip them in the bud" now! If our children find whining to be a valuable tool in getting their way ... they will continue to whine into adulthood and an adult whiner isn't pretty!!! If our children are chronic complainers ... you can pretty much bet that their future spouses will spend a lifetime of listening to constant negative words ... or won't spend their lifetime with that person at all. These are some of the behaviors that we as parents are responsible for curbing in order to eliminate adult grief for our children.

While supplying the physical needs of our children is a very important part of our job as a parent ... providing character training is far more important!!!

This is just something I've been thinking about lately.

Thanksgiving Day Disasters

Well I hope you all had a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Our day was most certainly NOT a typical Thanksgiving!!! It seemed that every time you turned around something else went wrong that day.

It all started with not getting up on time. Mike and Nick both had to work Thursday night due to the Black Friday sales, so I wanted to get the turkey on by 6 am so that we would be ready to eat by 1 pm. I didn't get up till 7:30 though, so the turkey went in 2 hours late.

No biggie ... we'll eat at 3 pm instead ... still plenty of time to take a nap. J

A few hours after the turkey had been cooking it was time to pretty much start everything else. Zach and Nick made egg noodles the day before and I was putting them into the pot. As I went to grab another handful of noodles off the pan the wax paper they were on went “poof”! I had gotten the wax paper too close to the burner and it was on fire!!! **Do you know your first instinct is to blow the fire out? I think that comes from blowing out birthday candles. J **  WARNING: Do NOT blow on wax paper if it’s on fire!

Zach and I were cracking up at this point, hurrying to get the noodles off the pan and thrown into the pot, and then dashing to the door to throw the pan outside. I’m sure we looked as silly as we felt. We managed to save the noodles without any bodily harm.

Mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, deviled eggs … these all went well.

Time to take the turkey out of the oven so that the sweet potatoes, rolls, and pies could all have their turn in the oven. So out comes the turkey and we turn the heat up on the oven and wait for it to preheat. And wait. And wait. And wait. The oven doesn’t seem to want to get any hotter. Actually it seems to be cooling off. L 

Mike! To my dismay my husband can’t figure out why the oven isn’t working. But then he spots the problem. The heating element in the bottom of the oven in burnt in two!!! What!?! I have more stuff to cook!

Good thing I was talking with Nana when we figured the stove wasn’t working. She reminded me that we had a little oven thing (it’s a rotisserie/oven thing … I don’t know what you call that) that I could put stuff in.

So the turkey went back in the oven to help it keep warm, the mashed potatoes went in the microwave on the keep warm setting, and the egg noodles just sat on the stove top … they can be reheated. In go the sweet potatoes to the little oven thingy. The breaker kicks. Oh! That’s right, I can only run extra appliance at a time. Ok, so the microwave is turned off and the sweet potatoes are on again. This little oven thingy is only big enough to cook one thing at a time.

30 minutes later … sweet potatoes come out … stuffing goes in … 30 minutes after that stuffing comes out … rolls go in. 15 minutes later oven thingy gets turned off.  Microwave gets started to warm up the potatoes, noodles get turned back on to warm them up.

Table gets set, Mike carves the turkey, say prayer and eat. Finally! J The younger boys are loving all the Thanksgiving Day dinner stuff I had on the table. I made a menu this year and they thought it was great and wanted to order like they were in a restaurant. I have pictures of our table below.

We’re talking about what everyone is grateful for, eating our dinner (and yes it is dinner time by the time we did get to eat), so thankful the replacement part for the oven is less than $20 J, and just really enjoying ourselves.

Then pie is mentioned! Ack!!! I forgot to start the pies! So half way through dinner the first pie goes into the oven thingy. It’ll be at least an hour before it’s cooked and then it has to have time to cool off. Only 1 pumpkin pie got made. At least we were able to have some before the younger boys went off to spend the night with Nana and Pawpaw. Mike and Nick had to work that night. Zach, Alex, and I were shopping (that’s another story).

All in all … we had a good Thanksgiving. Didn’t go as planned, but we were altogether, we are all happy & healthy, the oven lasted at least as long to get the turkey fixed (no way it would have fit in that little oven) and we had plenty of food to eat.

Even though it didn’t go as planned … we were thankful for what we did have … and that’s really what Thanksgiving is all about anyhow! J

Ok ... maybe I won't have pictures of our table ... it doesn't seem to be working for me now.

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Volcano & Wacky Mud Science

Lowe's Build and Grow Free Kids' Clinics are AWESOME!!! Walter and Sammy love going to these clinics. Sometimes the things are a little to "babish" for my boys, but most times they get to make a cool little project.


This past Saturday they built a Science Lab.

It's just a little wooden frame with a couple of test tubes, a dish, and some experiment cards, but the boys had a fun time with the couple of experiments they've done so far.

After building it we headed over to Walmart to pick up the supplies we didn't have at home to complete the experiments they wanted to do. Our first one was the volcano:

They just now realized that this is what Mom uses to clean out the drains in the house ... well minus the cherry Jello!


Next up was Wacky Mud ... this stuff is messy!




As you can see this was the best one though :)  What boy doesn't love anything that is pretty yucky??? LoL

It was fun trying to figure out if it was a solid or liquid though. After mixing it up you could tap the top of it and it really felt solid ... but try picking that stuff up! It oozed right out of your hands!

This was a fun time with my boys! This is one of the reasons I love Lowe's :)

Super Saturdays

Highlands Museum has the following description of what they are calling Super Saturdays on their website.

“The museum will be holding science and history workshops at the museum every Saturday at 2:00pm. We are calling it Super Saturdays! The workshops are geared toward elementary and middle school aged children, but would be a great thing to do with the entire family!

Each workshop will be held two times so hopefully you can make it to your favorite one!

November
5th and 26th   Wings of WWII
     Students will learn about the evolution of aircraft as weapons during WWII and how it changed the war and brought about an American victory. Students will get to make models of planes to take home and will finish off their day by flying a scale model B-25 Bomber across the Mezzanine of the Museum!

With some of the workshops, we provide supplies for each child. To help us cover the cost, it will be $3 per person.”

This sounded really interesting, so we took our boys to it. Here are some pictures of what they got to see & do while at the workshop.

I’m extremely happy that the boys had a great time and want to go back to more of the workshops held at the museum. We’ll be more than happy to take them to future outings. Although I have some real concerns about the way they describe the workshops and the cleanliness of it.

This one wasn’t very well planned. We stood around where we were told that the instructor would meet us and finally just happened to see a couple of guys fooling around with a plane. Well after having to ask about it we were told that was the instructor and to go on upstairs. I don’t think it would have hurt to let us parents know that the class was upstairs to begin with and they really should have introduced themselves and said come on. Something. Anything.

After that was sorted out … they had a great time talking with the guy doing the presentation, but there was a lot of time wasted with the airplane they were “flying” across the Mezzanine. It was a plane on a string and there was something wrong with that string so the plane wouldn’t “fly” right. So there was some down time between kids getting a turn. Most didn’t mind as they ran off doing other things or looking at other stuff. They were super cute when it was their turn to fly though! They also got to drop a “bomb” on a floating boat (brag inserted here ... Walter was the only one to make it into the water & bomb a boat! LoL many of the kids got it in the water but he was real happy about actually hitting the boat ... that's my boy!)  … well if you pulled the string at the right time you would hit the water … but it was hard. That certainly would take some practice … hit or miss though it was fun for the kids.

Then it was downstairs to “make models of planes”. It was a large sheet of paper. They made a big paper airplane. What!?! Yes a big paper airplane. That is so NOT “Students will get to make models of planes to take home” … It’s not a bad thing … what kid who likes planes doesn’t like to make paper airplanes? Especially a big one! I just think the wording on the website is very misleading. I didn’t expect a real good model of an airplane, but I sure as heck didn’t expect they would just give them a piece of paper either. Ah well, my boys have been playing with their's all weekend ... they aren't planes anymore though! hahaha

Something has to be said for them trying to draw in people to their workshops, but fudging the truth about what is going on doesn’t make a real good impression and a little prep work would go along way for the workshop to run smoothly. But like I said, the boys had a ball with it and we’ll do it again mainly because it’s of interest to them and when you’re homeschooling you want your kids to be interested in all kinds of learning.

Of special note to parents … I wouldn’t let my children play around downstairs unless you have looked it over pretty well. I understand it’s an area for children to play and learn and that it wouldn’t be spotless, but there is a huge cleanliness issue going on down there. All the clothes and shoes need to see a washer immediately! The toys and such need to be thrown into a sink full of soapy bleach water. The phone at the McDonald’s station was just plain nasty … for one it’s broken and should be thrown away … after picking it up though … ew … you can tell it hasn’t even been wiped off in forever. The dispensers with the hand sanitizer in them were empty too.

I so dislike having to give this a not so great review. We love taking our boys out and about to places like this that having a potential for such learning. Finding local places is an extra plus. So anytime I can find a local place that if offering something like this we love to go and I so wanted to be able to brag about our local wonders!

I believe in second chances though, so ... here's hoping we just caught the museum at a bad time and we have a better experience with the next workshop!

Non-productive Week ...

It started Sunday afternoon with a visit from Papaw (my Dad). He wanted to take Walter & Sammy fishing - all night. Which is fine. The boys LOVE spending time with their Papaw. : ) So we packed up their clothes for an overnight fishing trip and off they went.

Monday morning I spent with Netflix. Once I start a series I have to finish it ... so since the kids were gone I watched tv curled up on the couch with my blanket and remotes. : )
Papaw brought the boys back home around noon or so. Walter ended up having an allergic reaction to something. My poor baby's face was swollen and he had a rash on both arms and neck. So off to the doctor's office we went to wait and wait to be seen. He worried the whole time about co op the next day. He didn't want to go if his face was still swollen. After finally getting back to see the doctor they gave Walter a shot and then a prescription. Needless to say we didn't really put in much book learning that day!

Tuesday morning Walter was normal looking. No redness or swelling! Yay!!! : ) So we got ready for co op. The boys are just loving their co op classes. They both have a gym and science class (loving science!).  Then Walter also has art, music, and bible studies. Sammy does a FIAR (Five in a Row) class for about 1 1/2 hours. On co op days we don't do homeschool studies at home unless we have a video to watch or something like that.

Today I fully intended to get some school work done ... really. But life just didn't agree with me on that one! The boys decided that 5 am was a good time to get up today. I really don't know what that was about. Walter complains and complains when I wake him up 7 am and Sammy is more slug than anything else during the mornings. LoL Moans and groans and wants to go back to bed. Today though they were both bright eyed and bushy tailed! It was like having morning people for kids. I was the total slug this morning! So Mom vegged out on the couch while the boys explored their morning super powers.

We did manage to get in a video about Japan before running off to the Paramount to see Mathemagic. Super cute show and funny! The boys complain about math, but they liked this guy with his magic tricks and they answered the math questions from the audience. Since I was sitting beside Sammy I could hear what he was saying clearly ... and I'm proud to say he was getting them all correct!!! From what I understand Walter knew what the answers were too. So I'm proud all over again! That's my boys! : )

So I guess the week hasn't really been all that unproductive after all. I just needed to write it down to realize it!

It may not have been a week for learning that I had planned but other learning did occur. Just hanging out with Papaw is a learning experience for anyone ... and there is all that nature when you are outdoors. Co Op provided some hands on learning and the boys were able to socialize ... they love making new friends! Our math show was a good reenforcement and made me realize how much they really have been learning during our math sessions at home.

It's great to be able to homeschool. It's wonderful to realize that your kids are learning even when you don't notice or think they aren't.

They fool you into thinking they really aren't learning what you are trying to teach. Then you sit here at the computer and start typing away and it hits you. They are paying attention! They are learning! You aren't the bad parent/teacher that you were thinking you were.

I'm off to hug my little ones and let them know I'm proud of them for being such good little learners!