Wordless Wednesday

Happy Halloween, A Week Late

Well I had to miss out on the Halloween fun this year because a broken bone, but I absolutely refused to missing out on carving pumpkins. Here are the kids drawing designs on their pumpkins while we watched Halloween movies on the laptop. Just as we finished I put on "Nightmare Before Christmas" and had to take a pic of it with the pumpkins. 

Trent went as Darth Vader this year, and Hunter refused to wear a costume because we didn't have a Sonic the Hedgehog one.... He's been very difficult lately. It's a good thing that Trent has been so helpful. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Happy Halloween, A Week Late

Well I had to miss out on the Halloween fun this year because a broken bone, but I absolutely refused to missing out on carving pumpkins. Here are the kids drawing designs on their pumpkins while we watched Halloween movies on the laptop. Just as we finished I put on "Nightmare Before Christmas" and had to take a pic of it with the pumpkins. 

Trent went as Darth Vader this year, and Hunter refused to wear a costume because we didn't have a Sonic the Hedgehog one.... He's been very difficult lately. It's a good thing that Trent has been so helpful. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

My Foot Is Still Broken

Hey to everyone. Yes, my foot is still broken. I do not need to have surgery at this time because my bone is starting to heal. I have another new cast on. My fifth one. It is green. I will be going back to the hospital in December to have it taken off and have another round of X-rays done. I fully expect to be in a cast through January. 

I spoke with the doctor about what my options are. If I were to have surgery, I would be guarantee'd to be off my feet for a definite three months. Also, there are no openings for surgery until March. However, if I let my body heal on it's own, there is the chance that it will be better in a much sooner time frame. The doc says that the reason it is taking so long for the bone in my foot to heal is because of the way the fracture happened. It doesn't need to be set or reset because the way the break happened, the bone is still touching and just needs time to heal. I just need to rest and stay off my feet as much as possible. 

As to any other reasons that it is taking so long, it's just the nature of fracture I have and how my body heals. I'm sorry that I don't have any more answers for anybody and I can't speed the process up. It will take a long time. That's just how it is. I really don't need for anyone to get upset and off-put by how long it's taking because that doesn't change the fact of the circumstances. 

Positive things are that I have my knee walker. While I still have an immensely hard time doing the house work with it, I can keep up on the dishes and cook for my family. My biggest problems right now are how to get the kids out of the house and occupied, and how to keep my house un-disgusting. The kids are driving me bonkers because they have been cooped up in the house, when I go through the ordeal of getting them out, I'm wiped out. With the weather getting colder, doc says I also need to stay in warm places as much as possible so my toes don't have any problems. 

I cannot say thank you enough to all of my wonderful friends who have been helping me. You are an amazing bunch of people and there is no way I could have gotten through the earlier part of this ordeal without all of you. Love to you all!

My Foot Is Still Broken

Hey to everyone. Yes, my foot is still broken. I do not need to have surgery at this time because my bone is starting to heal. I have another new cast on. My fifth one. It is green. I will be going back to the hospital in December to have it taken off and have another round of X-rays done. I fully expect to be in a cast through January. 

I spoke with the doctor about what my options are. If I were to have surgery, I would be guarantee'd to be off my feet for a definite three months. Also, there are no openings for surgery until March. However, if I let my body heal on it's own, there is the chance that it will be better in a much sooner time frame. The doc says that the reason it is taking so long for the bone in my foot to heal is because of the way the fracture happened. It doesn't need to be set or reset because the way the break happened, the bone is still touching and just needs time to heal. I just need to rest and stay off my feet as much as possible. 

As to any other reasons that it is taking so long, it's just the nature of fracture I have and how my body heals. I'm sorry that I don't have any more answers for anybody and I can't speed the process up. It will take a long time. That's just how it is. I really don't need for anyone to get upset and off-put by how long it's taking because that doesn't change the fact of the circumstances. 

Positive things are that I have my knee walker. While I still have an immensely hard time doing the house work with it, I can keep up on the dishes and cook for my family. My biggest problems right now are how to get the kids out of the house and occupied, and how to keep my house un-disgusting. The kids are driving me bonkers because they have been cooped up in the house, when I go through the ordeal of getting them out, I'm wiped out. With the weather getting colder, doc says I also need to stay in warm places as much as possible so my toes don't have any problems. 

I cannot say thank you enough to all of my wonderful friends who have been helping me. You are an amazing bunch of people and there is no way I could have gotten through the earlier part of this ordeal without all of you. Love to you all!

Lazy Lazy Lazy

Yes. I am a lazy person. I have not blogged in months and months and months. I have had so much going on to blog about, too. I just haven't felt like it. I haven't been writing in my diary either. At least I don't get paid to write my blog. I'd be in big trouble then. 

Worst part is, I have no excuse not to be blogging! I broke my foot around August 19th and have been pretty much sitting on my tush for weeks and weeks. I have a million other things I could have been doing while being laid up in bed. Making many many menu plans. Creating the World folders for the kids out of my old NatGeo magazines. Drawing. Reading. The list goes on and on....

Truth is, I have a really bad twitter addiction going on right now. For those who follow me on the twitters, or via facebook, you may be saying "No Marla, you've barely been using your account. I think you've updated twice in two months!" Well, I have more than one account. Let's leave it at that. I'm hoping that once I'm out of my cast I will be getting back more into the swing of things and using twitter less and less. 

Here is a brief update of what the kids and I have been up to the past few months. We decided to take the Summer off from any school and during August I decided exactly what curriculum we would be using for math and language arts then made the purchases for what we needed. My friends Angel and Steve got hitched at the end of August and asked Trent and I to be part of the wedding party. It was an amazing ceremony and Trent made an adorable little ring bearer. I felt slightly ridiculous because at that point I was in a cast, but I had a lot of fun anyway. I'm so happy for my friends!

Trent and I started his curriculum around the third week of September and he has been doing very well with it. We are using Veritas Press Museum Phonics kit for his language arts and Horizons for math. It is so nice having everything all laid out for me to teach him and I never expected our school time together would be as much fun as it is. We both really seem to enjoy doing the work together. 

Even though the Phonics Museum is bible based, I'm still using it and just cutting out a lot of the more religious parts to make it more secular. Otherwise, this program has been great! It incorporates music, art, history, sights, sounds, activities, writing and critical thinking to teach a child how to read and write. The last time we had a school day, I gave Trent his first test and he got an A on it! 

The math curriculum we're using has been great, too. I got all the manipulatives to go with the workbook and Trent has very much been enjoying using those. I only let him use the manipulatives when we are doing school, otherwise I'm sure he would get bored with them. I'm really like Horizons because it is repetitive enough that he is learning the material without getting boring. 

I've also been trying to include Hunter in Trent's lessons, but he's not always interested. I really need to figure out what I can do with him while I'm working with Trent. It's been difficult because we've mostly been doing our school time in my bed. It's so hard for me to move the materials around the house, and my bed is the only place that really stays neat and tidy during the day. 

The kids and I also joined a homeschool co-op that meets every Friday. I volunteered to be the preschool teacher since Hunter is in that class, though I haven't been able to plan much for them. That's ok, though, because for preschoolers the most important thing they can be doing is playing with each other. Trent is in the kindergarten class and has made a really good friend there. I'm also making some good friends as well. I really need that in the area I'm in, because all the friends I have made are either a little too far away OR their kids will be attending public schools. I don't plan on severing any of the friendships I've made, I just need to make sure I'm branching out in ways that will be beneficial to myself and the kids. 

Anyways, the co-op has been a wonderful resource for all of us. This group is only just being put together now and I'm really hoping that it is going to work out and will continue. I know I am very committed to it for as long as we are homeschooling. 

That's about all that has been going on. My cast comes off tomorrow and I find out whether or not I will be needing to have surgery done on my foot for the bone to heal properly. Wish me luck!

Self-Discovery

So, as most folks who read my blog know, my family has decided that we are going the homeschool route. Trent will be kindergarten age at the end of this month. Pretty scary for me. It shouldn't be too hard though. We've been doing home preschool all along and to be honest there really isn't that much difference between kindergarten and preschool. We'll just have a more formal curriculum this year, is all. 

One of the biggest reasons that we decided to homeschool is because I wanted to be able to travel with the kids. However, after the past couple of years of the preschool "trial run" (I've been thinking of preschool as practice for once we actually start grade school) I'm starting to think that traveling won't be such a great idea. The kids and I have been travelling quite a bit, as most of my friends in the NoVA area know. I've discovered just how hard it is for me to get back into the routine of things after we have taken one of our trips. It's not the kids that have the problem with travelling. Heck, I don't have a problem with travelling. I have a problem with how long it takes me to "get my act together" after we have been on a long trip. 

We can be gone anywhere from two weeks, to a month and a half. It seems the longer the trip, the longer and harder it is for me to get back into my routine. We got back from an unplanned three-week trip to New York on the last day of June. I STILL am not unpacked. My house is a wreck. I find motivating myself to do much of anything a major challenge. Looking at the clutter and mess makes me want to crawl into my bed and pretend it doesn't exist. That doesn't work of course, it just makes matters worse. 

When I started staying home, I realized I would really have to force myself to keep house. I'm sort of an all or nothing person. When I clean, I am on a furious cleaning frenzy and won't stop until I fall from exhaustion (only a slight exaggeration). When I am in a lazy mood... Well, let's just say it's hard to get me out of the funk I find myself in if I let that go on too long. Once I stopped working, I kept finding myself in this cycle of working too hard and then crashing for three or four days. 

So, I then tried making sure that I did a certain amount everyday.This of course backfires on me, too. When I try to force myself to do things, there's a part of me that just shuts down. All I want to do is lay around in bed, or watch tv, or play a video game, or spend hours on the internet. I sort of turn it into a game with myself. The rules are as follows:

- Tell myself to do one household chore. Let's say the laundry in this instance.

- Make half-hearted attempts at doing said chore. In this case, moving laundry from the dryer to a basket and think about folding it.

- Continue to think about folding it all day. 

- Repeat the following day.

- Possibly repeat for a third day in a row to an entire week later.

- Find something else to occupy time. Internet, watching a movie with the kids, doing an activity with the kids, etc.

- At this point, I have done the half-hearted attempts with many loads of laundry and there is now a small mountain of clothes that needs to be folded.

Now repeat this for all of my household chores and... SIGH!

I find myself caught trying to find the proper balance of doing enough to make sure it doesn't get worse and knowing when to let myself have some down time. It's hard trying to figure that out. What I have realized I can do is trick myself. I don't like to do whatever it is I "should" be doing. So, I "should" be doing the dishes. Instead of doing the dishes, normally I would find something else to occupy my time, like spending hours on Reddit or Pinterest. If I'm feeling motivated enough I will avoid doing that and spend my time doing a chore that doesn't feel as necessary to me. This could be anything from scrubbing crayon marks off the walls to turning the compost in the backyard. Here's how a typical in my mind conversation goes:

OCD House Must Be Clean Me: Self, you really need to make sure those dishes are clean! Look there are only a few plates in the sink right now. If you wash them now, they won't be adding to the pile later when you make dinner!

 

Avoiding All Responsibilities Me: But I hate washing dishes. Besides there's not that much there, and look! There's laundry that needs to be folded!

 

OCD House Must Be Clean Me: Oh, alright! We really do need to take care of those dishes at some point today, though!

 

Avoiding All Responsibilities Me: Alright! Got out of doing the dishes!

Of course the downside to this is that I then end up with a huge pile of dishes, but at least I'm doing something! The idea is that if I can convince procrastinating side to do this enough times, the house will start looking good. When the house looks good, I get more motivated to keep it clean because I feel good about it! Once I feel good about it, it's easier to keep up with my normal chores and schedules!

The big problem is that once that habit is broken by, say, a month long trip, it takes me a long time to get back to that point again. So, I guess what I'm really trying to explain here is that if I realistically want to homeschool my children I cannot be doing all of the travelling I had originally envisioned us doing. I need a certain amount of routine and order to make it happen and travelling throws too much of monkey wrench in the works. 

Of course, we can always do school during the Summer to accomodate when we travel during the rest of the year, too. This will probably end up happening next year because I have several trips planned during the coming school year that I am simply NOT missing out on.