Thanksgiving Day

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope everyone else did too.

Thaksgiving morning we picked up Doug's daughter and she joined us for a trip to Doug's parents home.

The girls were goofy, Austin slept, and Michael just enjoyed the ride. Michael does really well even though it's a fairly long ride - about and hour and a half. A couple times he did ask Doug if he could find Pawpaw's house. I always enjoy the chance to get out for awhile and this time I took a couple pictures of the scenery.

We had a delicious Thanksgiving Dinner prepared by Doug's mother. My favorite parts were the dressing, and the pumpkin pie. Oh, and the pink jello salad. I didn't get any pictures of the meal, I was too busy enjoying it.

The weather was nice and the kids had a lot of fun playing outside.

Amanda had the camara (actually my phone) part of the time and I found these pictures when she gave it back to me.

Can you tell she loves these boots?

And this is my favorite.

It was a great day.

Today went much more smoothly than yesterday although it was still very busy. I was just updating the log book and realized that over the course of the day 18 different children were here in childcare. Then with my own three added to the group it makes a total of 21 children ranging in age from 8 months to 12 years. As I write this at 8:45PM there are still four here. Two will be leaving around 10:30 and two are staying overnight.

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A friend stopped by this morning just to say "Hi" and brought along sausage biscuits from Hardees for both of us. It was such a positive way to start the day. Since it's hard for me to get out sometimes she occasionally just stops by just to chat.

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Doug took Austin and Michael to the child/youth program at church this evening. Austin's friend Tristan went along this time. This is my weekly break from Michael, who always does wonderful and charms everyone in church and then reverts back to the same oppositional behaviour as soon as he comes home. Although the last few days he's been quick to say he's sorry after an episode, often on his own.

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Micheal and I made homemade finger paint early this morning fully intending to use it today but somehow our plans kept being derailed and we never got it out. But we sure did have fun mixing the colors anyway.

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And that's about as exciting as it gets today. I'm hoping to hear something a little more definitive about the house tomorrow. Like I said before, I am not very good at this whole waiting thing.

This and That

• We have much more hope right now that  the house we are hoping to buy really will be ours. I'm not good at waiting for answers and it's been rough waiting since Thursday evening for them. But finally this evening we were able to talk to someone and it looks like it's going to happen. Not set in stone yet but hopefully heading that way. I'm excited again.
• I took this picture yesterday to commemorate the joy of seeing brother and sister getting along. Unfortunately it didn't carry over into today. I know they love each other but Wow! They can really argue!

• We are happy that two more new children joined our crew this week. Kansas is 7 years old and is here 2 -3 evenings a week and Jayden is 15months old and here 6 mornings a week.
• But I was sad when this morning, the very first morning that Jayden was here, he fell and bumped his head on the door frame resulting in a rather larger goose egg on his forehead. Why do these things always seem to happen on the first day?
• We had two children out sick today. I hope they feel better soon and we see them tomorrow.
• Our new history book The Story of the World Volume 1 finally arrived. We started it yesterday and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately our afternoon school session was interrupted so we didn't get to read any more of it today. We were able to get math, reading and Bible done before I had to call an end to schoolwork for the day because of very cranky babies. I had planned to include history and literature today as well but it just wasn't going to happen. But tomorrow is another day and should be a much easier one. I sure hope so anyway.
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• This afternoon a friend of ours from church came over and had Doug help him work on his truck. Michael enjoyed going out and "helping."
• And now I think it's time for me to go make sure I have things set up to run smoothly in the morning. First child is scheduled to be here at 5:15AM.

• We had a great service in church this morning. A visiting evangelist (whose name I simply cannot remember) brought the message. His opening question was "Are you famous in Hell?" He then went on to challenge us to be the kind of Christ followers who make Satan cringe because of the way we allow Jesus to work in our hearts and lives, allowing His Light and Love to shine to those around us.
• I made another batch of homemade playdough this afternoon since the kids had mixed up all our other playdough until we simply had a big grayish, greenish, brownish mass. I always think it's so fun to mix the colors and see what shades I can come up with and Tammy and Amanda joined the fun, mixing up some colors of their own.
• It was a fairly quiet day as far as the daycare goes. One child stayed overnight and left just before we went to church. Another came just before time for church and left this afternoon. Three more came this evening and left around 8:30.
• This afternoon Doug took Austin to his friend Aaron's birthday party. Austin and Aaron have been best friends for years and spend as much time together as possible
• I'm looking forward to beginning a new week and hoping it brings us some good news about the house.

I hope everyone had a great weekend and has a great week.

Animal Care Instructions

Amanda and Austin are on vacation this week with their grandparents and other extended family. I miss them a lot but I'm glad they are having fun.

Before Amanda left she wrote me a complete set of instructions for taking care of her pets, It was so cute I have to copy them here.

Remember to put Toby's food on a plate so he does not cut his tongue.

Only put his food near his beds. I am trying to teach him he can't come on the entrance porch.

Please, please, please make sure Scout AND Toby know they are good boys.

And sometimes can you pet them a little bit.

And if you see one of Scout's toys can you throw it for him so he can chase it.

8:30AM - Toby's first meal

Noonish - Toby's 2nd meal

5:30PM Toby's 3rd meal

The rats can eat leftovers from meals or just about anything actually.  Please make sure that they have PLENTY of water.

Thank You.

Homeschool Reflections - Looking Back at September

This year we started our homeschool year the day after Labor Day. It took us a couple weeks to find our groove we seem to be in a good place right now.

Our routine this year is very simple and takes about two hours a day. Math and Independent Reading are done in the mornings between 10:00 and 11:00. The math assignment is done first and when that is finished the rest of the hour is filled with independent reading. A few of the books the kids have read so far this year are The Black Stallion by Walter Farley (Amanda), Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (Austin and Amanda) and The Story of King Arthur and His Knights from the Classic Starts series (Austin and Amanda).

Our second hour of work is in the afternoon when the little kids are napping. During this time we sit down together and I read aloud. We do Bible, Science or Social Studies (alternating books) and Literature. Our Bible reading takes 5 - 10 minutes and then we finish the first half hour with the Science or Social Studies book that we are reading. The second half hour is spent reading our literature books. So far this year we've read Don't Know Much About Space by Kenneth C. Davis and Death on the Nile (A Hercule Poirot Mystery) by Agatha Christie.

This system is working very well for us. I feel like we are covering the basics without taking too much time away from all the other things that are capturing their interests at the moment. Things like building endless models with K-Nex, nursing a sickly abandoned kitten back to health, self inititiated reading just because the book looks interesting, walks through woods and fields, and watching The Learning Channel, Discovery Health and Animal Planet. It allows us time to work together as a family in our home daycare business and gives them the opportunity to earn money of their own. And, of course, earning money and learning how to manage it is another important part of their education.

And I do not have to worry in the slightest about lack of socialization. Amanda has five really good friends and Austin has three that they spend time with, both in their homes and with them in our home. Then there are all the families we learn to know through our business. Add to that activities at church and time spent with extended family and they are in no way lacking socialization.

So over all I feel like our first month of school for this year has gone very well and looking forward to October.

Meandering Through Saturday

All day I've been enjoying these roses that Mona brought with her when she came to work Wednesday. They are on a little shelf in the kitchen where I can see them while I cook and bake and feed the kids and clean up after them. Somehow they make me happy just to have them there to look at.

I tried some new recipes to today and they all turned out very good. I made Pumpkin Bread, Chili, and Amish Bread. The last few weeks I have been using the bread machine more and it's so much fun to try new reicpes in it. And I love the smell of baking bread. Another thing that makes me happy.

The rest of the day was spent with the kids and at naptime I printed the pages for our new circle time book and the pictures for our new wall display for next week. Most of what I printed came from one of my favorite sites for kids activities - DLTK Kids. Our letter of the week is Kk, the shape is circle, the color is purple and the number is 8. I printed several songs for the letter Kk and some pictures of things that begin with Kk, as well as some songs about dinosaurs  to compliment our dinosaur wall display. The only thing that did not come from DLTK Kids was our sign language lesson for the week. That came from Lesson Tutor.

Doug took trash to the landfill, went grocery shopping (Amanda and Michael went with him), did some laundry (Thank you!) and mowed the yard at our rental house. Austin slept until after 2:00 this afternoon and then I had Amanda go wake him. He's had a cold and was really sleepy yesterday, so I thought he probably needed the rest, but I also wanted him to be able to sleep tonight. Amanda spent most of her free time either playing with Toby and Scout (our cats) or on her laptop watching YouTube videos of WebKinz.

And that in a nutshell was our day. I feel like I just kinda meandered through my Saturday and it was good.

Yesterday and today have been the kind of days that just move smoothly along pretty much the way they are supposed too. Which is a wonderful and somewhat rare occasion around here.

The weather has been nice, not too hot and not too cool. The kids have been in pretty good moods, homeschool has gone well and life looks good.

At the moment (9:22PM) we only have one daycare child here and he's asleep as is Michael.

The Wednesday evening children's program at church has started again so Doug took Michael and Austin. Doug always stays and helps out then brings the boys back home. Amanda would rather stay home and we have decided not push the issue. So she was home with me. I stay home because of the kids we have here in daycare. Some are too young to go and some leave at a time the would make it difficut to go to church. But I enjoy the quieter evenings with Michael occupied at church.

Yesterday I heard a sudden little yell from Amanda and then Austin and Amanda came running to the kitchen to tell us they had found some kind of strange insect and didn't know what it was. I had an idea when I saw it what it was but wasn't completely sure. The kids caught and kept it until we could look it up. This afternoon we did looked it up online and found I was right. It is called a camel cricket. I think the kids are planning to take it along to Grandma's tomorrow evening to show everyone there and then they will probably let it go.



Vacuum Repair Lessons

Austin was vacuuming the nursery today and accidentally got something caught in the vacuum cleaner resulting (we thought) in a broken belt. So Doug told him this was a good time to learn how to replace the belt on the vacuum cleaner. As it turned out, he had turned off the vacuum before the belt broke but since they had already taken it apart Doug went ahead and showed him how to replace the belt. My very important contribution to the whole process was to take pictures.

Catching Up Again - Our Somewhat Crazy Week

This past week has been a little crazy. In some ways not so great, in other ways wonderful, but either way very busy.

Tuesday we began our homeschooling year. We had a great day Tuesday and the kids really enjoyed it even though they weren't to excited at first. Math is our biggest challenge and it is done first thing in the morning and gotten completely out of our way before we move on to anything else. The other morning subject is reading and they are both loving the books they are reading. In the afternoons we are doing Bible, Science/Social Studies (alternating days), and Literature. We are also spending about 30 minutes each afternoon watching a video from Snag Learning. We watched 3 Points and I felt it really made all of us think about how fortunate we are and what role each of us has in making life better in some way for others.

On Wednesday we had two new kids start coming to daycare. Unfortunately I got up that morning and discovered that I had been hit with some kind of stomach but. There absolutely no way I could handle taking care of the kids so I had to call Doug home from work. I felt so bad doing that but Mona (my helper) had left early on Monday because she was sick and had not been able to work at all on Tuesday. I had no idea if she was coming in Wednesday or not but even if she was she normally doesn't get here until 10AM. This was 6:30AM and I new I couldn't handle things that long. Thankfully, Doug was able to leave right away and as soon as he got home I went to bed and stayed there until about 3:00 that afternoon. Also, thankfully, Mona was able to come in for a few hours and make lunch, clean up, and get dinner in the oven, before she had to leave again. I was grateful that the mother of the two new kids took everything in stride and understood these things happen and they were back the next day to a much more normal schedule.

Thursday evening shortly after Mona left for the day she had to turn around and come back because the radiator in her car developed a big leak. So Friday her son brought a new one and Saturday Doug put it in for her - with supervision.

Another wonderful fix-it project that Doug had to deal with when he came home from work on Friday was a stopped up toilet. It turned out that "someone" (translate that to Michael) had flushed the end of a paper towel holder (that I accidentally broke the other day and should have thrown away) and it was causing major issues. Lovely!

The church we attend just finished building a new addition and this weekend in celebration of that there were a lot of ativities going on all weekend long. We've had to miss most of it because of daycare schedules but we were able to go Friday evening to a concert by No Greater Love. It was great to get out for an evening and the music and singing were beautiful. We took our kids and some their friends and they had a great time as well. Michael was even out in aisle dancing for the last half of the concert. Also wonderful was getting see for the first time all the renovations and additions that have been going and I have to say the architects and builders did a wonderful job.

Amanda has adopted a stray cat the she originally named Lola. When we realized that Lola is a boy she changed the name to Toby. It was very malnourished and starving for attention and Amanda has been spending a lot of time nursing it back to health. She even bought him special food yesterday when she went grocery shopping with Doug.

 We have five daycare children so far today and three more scheduled to come later this evening but it has still been a pretty quiet and peaceful day. Hopefully the week is that way as well.

Catching Up

It's been almost a week since I've been here. I didn't intend to be gone this long but things have been pretty busy.

Austin's 14th birthday was Tuesday (8/31) and Michael's 4th birthday was Friday (9/03). We had a small party for them here at home on Sunday. It's amazing how fast they are growing up and I am enjoying seeing them grow and learn but at the same time I find myself wanting to hold on to each day as it passes, not wanting to miss a moment.

Austin had a friend here from Friday evening until this evening. Amanda had two friends here overnight Saturday night and then another friend came to visit for a  few hours Sunday evening.

Even though today is Labor Day we were open for business and had seven daycare children. My helper came in for awhile but left early because her allergies were bothering her so bad she just wanted to go home and try to sleep.

I spent a large part of the day doing the final preparations for our homeschool year which begins tomorrow. I had gotten all the materials we need but needed to organize a little and plan out our time. The current plan will probably take us about 2 1/2 hours a day. I'm looking forward to it and I think Austin and Amanda will enjoy their studies. Math may be an issue because neither of them like it but we will do that first thing in the morning and get it out of our way. We are doing a lot of reading aloud with me reading to both of them. We always enjoy learning this way, it gives us a chance to learn together. History, science, Bible and literature are all going to approached this way, at least at the beginning of the year. There will also be silent reading assignments for each of them.

So I guess I'll get some rest and get ready for our fun tomorrow.

Day Two of Vacation

It's day two of our vacation and I am very much enjoying it. I love my work but am beginning to realize how much I need to schedule regular breaks to refuel. It's easy to think that since I work from home I don't need those down times but that's not true.

The kids have been enjoying it as well.

Amanda had a friend over Saturday evening and she stayed until early afternoon on Sunday. Today Amanda took Michael for a walk to visit the cows. This afternoon she went on a bike ride with another friend. Otherwise she's been busy on her computer playing WebKinz. And this evening she voluntarily cleaned up and vacuumed the playroom and living room.

Austin went with the youth pastor and a few other youth this afternoon out to eat and then to mow an elderly ladies yard. This evening he went over to the farm next door to help feed calves.

Since Doug didn't have to be up early to go to work this morning he agreed to be on call with the Rescue Squad all night last night. It was actually a quiet night but knowing that he could be called out any minute kept him from sleeping, so he's pretty tired today. But he still did some mowing and then took the van to the shop and had two new tires put on.

Later in the week we are taking the kids to the zoo one day and another day we are planning to visit Doug's parents who live about 80 miles south of us.

I told the kids that tomorrow morning they have to be up by 9:00 and we are going to finish the rearranging/reorganizing project we started in their rooms. They weren't excited about that but it has to be done and it's hard for me to help them when we have a house full of daycare kids.

As for me I've been doing a variety of things - writing, cleaning, napping. Just enjoying a slower pace.

As of today all my school age children that I provide childcare for are in school. So begins the days of waiting for the bus, arranging drop-offs and pickups and homework. No homework yet but I know it's coming.

The silence here was almost deafening today. Well, I guess that's an exaggeration because there are still my own three even if no one else shows up but it was much quieter without a houseful of school age kids - mostly boys. Although, honestly, some of the girls are louder than the boys.

This happened to be one of those days when the preschoolers were either home with their parents, parents were working a late shift or, as in the case of one child, were coming late because of a doctors appointment. So we took advantage of the extra time this morning and did a lot of work upstairs. Amanda still has things to rearrange from her room change. Austin needed to just do some general cleaning in his room. And I had lots of clothes to sort through and put away and laundry to do. There were four big boxes of clothes that were given too us to pass on as needed, use for the kids or do whatever with. I knew a lot of them were Michael's size or the next size or two up and needed to be put in his closet. I'm so glad that's done now.

Michael took advantage of the fact that I was busy and decided to give himself a haircut with Doug's electric razor.

I had to laugh every time I looked at him until Doug finally gave him a haircut this evening. He had to cut it down really really short, but it looks better than this anyway.

The salon that was in business right behind us has moved to a new location. Today the salon owners were back to finish cleaning out and offered to let us have four bookcases, and a small table that they no longer had use for. I was more than happy to give them a new home and now I'm full of ideas of how I want to rearrange the playroom. But the actual rearranging may have to wait until next week when we're on vacation and I won't have so many little ones to work around.

I can feel myself getting excited about vacation and feeling less focused on the day to day work. I can hardly wait to sleep in, read, write, and work on some projects that I've been looking for a chance to tackle. We are also planning a couple day trips - to visit Doug's parents and to go to the zoo. We've never taken Michael to the zoo and I'm excited about seeing his reaction to the animals.

As I'm writing this Austin and Amanda are outside with a flashlight looking at all the spiders that have shown up to take advantage of all the bugs that fly around our porch light every night. Because it stays on all night due to parents in and out picking up and dropping off their children their is a steady supply of insects to fly  into the webs. Amanda said there are about 12 spiders out there right now. And now Austin just came running in to tell me he found "a humungous gathering of slugs" outside.  

And on that lovely note I will say goodnight. I wonder what adventures tomorrow will bring?

After two days that looked like this . . .

. . . I was glad today was sunny. The kids really needed to get out in the yard and run off some energy.

Austin had a molar surgically removed today. I was so afraid his experience would be like mine when I had mine removed. It was awful for me. I had a bad experience with the removal and lots of pain afterwards. But he is doing awesome. After sleeping off the effects of the anesthesia . . .

. . . he's been hard to keep still. He wants to eat, wants to be up doing things and has very little pain. And he's enjoying his ice cream. His friend Aaron is here again for at least the weekend (I wouldn't be surprised if he stays until school starts) and they are keeping themselves occupied watching movies and looking up trading cards on E-bay.

Yesterday was a day of change with it being the first day in childcare here for one child and the last day for another. Welcome to our group Sebina and Gabe we will truly miss you.

We had a total of 13 kids in childcare (not all at once) today ages 5 months through 11 years. It was a busy day but good.

Fingerpainting, building,playing with the tool set, playing outside and finding lots of bugs (we had lots of school age boys today) were some of the fun things we did.

Yesterday evening Doug took Austin and Michael along with him to do some mowing at our rental house. On the way home they passed a tractor trailor that had tried to make a turn and went off the side a road a little. When the truck went off the road a tire on the trailor blew, causing the the truck to slide part way down a bank. They went back to see if the driver needed help. No one was injured but they stayed until help arrived and the truck was back on the road. Michael was one tired little boy when he finally got home and Austin was tired of taking care of Michael while they waited.

After the kids went to bed last night I did some cleaning. To keep myself awake and moving I listened to an audio book online. I found this site that has lots of older books recorded and archived. I listened to all of
A Message From the Deep Sea by R. Austin Freeman 

Trying to Walk a Rat, Burnt Pizza, and More!

It's been cloudy all day and rainy this evening, but I am loving the temperatures. It is 67 degrees right now and the forecast says a high of 79 tomorrow. My kind of weather! The 7-day forecast is showing temperatures in the 80's the rest of the week with a 30% chance of showers nearly every day.

Austin's friend Aaron finally went home today. Before he left he said he "I may be back in a week, or two weeks, or three weeks, or four weeks, or next summer." I have a feeling he's going to be back long before next summer. He and Austin ordered some things off E-Bay that they are excited about so I'm sure he'll want to be back to play with them when they come in. Plus they have so much fun together. They've been staying up way too late though and today it finally caught up with them and they didn't get up until about 1:00 this afternoon. Austin said they slept 12 hours so that tells me how late they were up last night.

Michael was busy almost all day going places with Daddy. They started out at the laundromat early this morning (I'll explain why in a bit), then went to the grocery store, the landfill, Wal-Mart, PetSmart (more about this one in a bit as well), and then to take some groceries to a friend who is fighting cancer and unable to work right now. When he wasn't with Daddy he was pushing a stroller around the house. He told Gabe to get in and drink a bottle and then pushed him around the house.

And the trip to the laundromat? Well, Doug has been trying to help me catch up on laundry and finally decided the easiest way to do that was take it all to the laundromat and put it in the biggest washing machines he could find. When he came home with all that clean dry laundry it took very little time to get it all put away. And now we're enjoying the wonderful feeling of being caught up on laundry. . . . until tomorrow. Oh well. Sometimes it's worth it even if it doesn't last long.

And the trip to PetSmart? Amanda has been researching online how to train pet rats and decided she wanted a harness for her rats so she could walk them. So she convinced Doug (as in begged from the time he walked in the door from work Friday evening until they finally went this afternoon) to take her to PetSmart so she could buy one. We tried to put it on the calmest rat (Micki) this evening. Twice. But she didn't like it. I'm sure Amanda will go back online and get some more information on how to get a rat trained to wear a harness and keep at it until she gets it. That's just the way she is.

And now I'm laughing at myself because I just wrote a whole paragraph about training rats. Seriously? When did this happen! Sometimes real life IS stranger than fiction. I wish I had gotten a picture of it.

I did get a picture of this though. It's what happens when I get interrupted by wild kids and totally forget I put a pizza in the oven.

Thankfully we had three others so no one went hungry. And Austin actually ate part of this one just because he's goofy like that.

As for me, in between all these other fun things and lots of kids (seven daycare kids ages 6 months to 10 years, plus a couple extras just for fun) I worked on getting the menu and activity schedule and supplies ready for next week.

And now it's time to call it a day, read a few minutes and get some sleep.

Good night everybody!

An Awesome Interview, A Storm, and Other Ramblings

I had a great interview this morning with a mother and her three boys ages 8, 7, and 4. The boys were so well mannered and well behaved. They interacted well with the other kids and really listened well to their mother. I am so excited about having them join our group here. They will be starting here August 17, the first day of school. The oldest two will get on and off the bus here and the four year old will stay all day.

Austin's friend Aaron is still here. He came Friday evening of last week and is staying until sometime Saturday. The plan was for him to go home Monday but he asked and got permission from both his mom and myself to stay until Tuesday. On Tuesday he asked to stay until Wednesday. On Wednesday he asked to stay until Saturday but his mom said he had to come home today. This morning he asked again and she agreed to let him stay until Saturday. He and Austin are having a grand time and I enjoy having him around as well. Michael looks up to him like another older brother and Amanda treats him as well as she treats her own older brother - which actually isn't so great sometimes but. . . that's another story.

My helper left around lunchtime yesterday because she wasn't feeling well and called in this morning because she still felt bad. It was a really slow day anyway so it worked out well. I did end up ordering Domino's pizza and cheesy bread for dinner though just to make things easier. I hope she's feeling better tomorrow though. We miss her and want her to feel well. Get better soon, Mona.

A storm came through this evening that blew down some trees and there were a number of power lines down. Our lights blinked but came right back on. One of the kids was afraid of the storm and showed it by being hyper and trying to talk louder than the storm, most of the time right in front of my face. He was pretending that he was the repairman fixing all the electric lines and cable boxes, and telling me about every step of the way. I guess that was his way of feeling like he had some control in what to him was a scary situation.

Austin, Amanda and Aaron are at Bible school this evening. I'm glad they get to go and have fun but I will be a little glad when our schedule returns to something closer to normal. I'm a little too much of a schedule person sometimes, I guess it's my OCD kicking in.

Enough rambling now. I need to work some more on the schedule and lineup of studies for the new school year. I can  hardly believe it's just around the corner again. We won't start until the Tuesday after Labor Day but I have a lot of work to do between now and then.

Daily Adventures at Rose's House Monday July 27, 2010

It was so nice to get a break from the hot weather today. It still felt like summer but not like "the dog days" of summer. The kids were glad to play outside more and I was definitely glad as well.

This morning I made drew a hopscotch pattern on the porch with chalk. The older kids played hopscotch a little but the younger ones enjoyed it more. We just called out the numbers as they landed on them and they thought that was great.

We played with water in the water table. I think we need a bigger water table. Or maybe two of them.

We also got played in the back yard awhile. This was the first time in nearly a week we had been in the back yard to play.

Austin has a friend here who has been here since Friday evening. I think he may just have decided to move in with. Not really, but I know he's planning to stay until at least Thursday morning. I'm just happy to see the two having so much fun together.

Austin, Amanda and Austin's friend Aaron went to Bible School this evening. They seemed to have had a great time. They came home happy and a little wired.

Austin had an appointment for a consultation with an oral surgeon this afternoon. He's having a molar removed in about two weeks. I think the main thing Austin got from the appointment is that for a few days he can only eat soft foods - like yogurt, mashed potatoes and ice cream. Some of his favorite foods. No salad allowed which makes him happy.

Lots of fun today and more fun on the way tomorrow.

Weekend

I somehow didn't get one single picture this weekend. In fact, I don't even know where my camera is. But there were things going on, everyone was busy.

Doug finished painting Amanda's room so now this week we can start getting it set up the way she wants it. She's excited about that and so am I. I'm especially excited about getting all her things out of the upstairs hallway and back into her room.

Austin left Friday with the church youth for a youth retreat. He had fun swimming, canoeing, and hanging out with the other youth. He came back Sunday afternoon.

Amanda spent Friday night at her friends' house. Then Saturday her friends were here for the night. So she had a good weekend as well.

Sunday afternoon the company that Doug works for (McKee Foods, Inc.) as a machinest had their company picnic so we went to that. Lots of free food, rides and games for the kids, and swimming. Unfortunately, I forgot the sunscreen and we all came back burned. But we had fun. 

And that, in a nutshell, was our weekend.

It's For You

Amanda and Austin are on vacation with extended family this week. Michael was excited to be able to talk to them on the phone when they called at lunchtime Wednesday.