Almost a Life-Changing Day

Every day I pick Romania up from the bus hub. It's actually my old high school building. I park the van and then Egypt and Holland and I get out and wait on the sidewalk. I parked the van on the opposite side of where the bus actually stops. When Romania got off the bus, I took Egypt's hand to cross the street and turned to Holland to tell him we were leaving. I assumed he was behind me on the right and I walked across with Egypt and Romania. When I was crossing, I saw a city bus half a block away and just continued on to the van. When I got there, I realized Holland had not come with us. He was talking to a boy in the doorway of another parked van. I decided not to call him, because I was afraid in doing that, he would run across the street. Just as the city bus is coming down the block we're in, Holland sees that we've crossed the street and starts to run toward us! I yelled and yelled for him to stop. I play it over and over in my head. If I had not seen him, he would have gotten run over. The bus driver barely had time to stop. I waved him to cross and he just yelled at me that I didn't yell "bus!". This just reinforces his inability to think before he acts. God was watching out for him yesterday for sure!

Some Great Websites

As a homeschooler, you're always on the lookout for good curriculum, fun and interesting websites and of course, good deals. I belong to a homeschooling co-op. It was free to sign up and they offer great discounts on curriculum, website memberships, field trip info, conference schedules and of course, freebies. My favorite.

Today I was going through their website because I wanted to find a deal on a membership for BrainPop. Romania's class has been using BrainPopJr. at school and I've been debating whether I should get it or not. I found a discount link and also found some great websites for free curriculum, games and interactive websites. Here are a few of the ones I bookmarked.

A Game A Day has brainteasers, word games, trivia and crosswords to challenge your knowledge, problem solving and critical thinking.

Story Online is a website that has people from the Screen Actors Guild reading books. There are activities and lesson ideas for each book. Holland and I listened to "Enemy Pie" read by Camryn Manheim. It was cute.

Xpeditions is from National Geographic. Lesson plans, maps, interactive fun, and xpedition hall - an interactive "museum".

Alder Plantetarium has great links to astronomy activities, showcases current exhibits, shows a current moon status and has a neat activity to chart the stars in your area and send in your results. They also have free podcasts to find out what celestial and man-made objects may be in your night sky and recent solar activity. These are only a few of the countless activities you can find on this website. One of my favorite so far and great since we are studying astronomy this year!

Parent Child Education gives tips, advice and activities for almost anything you could need. The very first page caught my attention because it shows how to teach a child to hold a pencil properly. I wish I had found this before Holland got used to his grip. They are mostly language based activities and videos to teach how to tie your shoes, put on a coat, letter-sound games and I saw a couple papier mache crafts.

Chess Kids is a website that - you guessed it - teaches kids to play chess! There is a beginner level that you can challenge a virtual opponent at the end of your lessons; there is an "Improvers" section that teaches famous moves and strategies. They say there are 3 years' worth of free lessons (refers to how long it would take in a school setting).

Have fun exploring all these great websites. And better yet - sign up for Homeschool Buyer's Co-Op and you can see for yourself all the great resources that are just a click away.

Busy Weekend

Do you ever feel like you've had a really busy weekend and then can't remember what you did that kept you busy? That's what I feel like this weekend. We did a lot, but I feel like we didn't DO anything. On Saturday while I was returning books to the library, I realized that the city was having a Fire/Safety Awareness day. So I came back home and got the kids and Super-Hero to come down so we could take a close-up look at some fire trucks. They got to ride a fire truck that Oregon City had used in 1947 and we also got a ride in the back of a police car. Those seats are not comfortable and I can't imagine anyone over 5'10" fitting in there! We bumped into some people from Romania's school and got some free ice cream.

On Sunday after church, Super-Hero took the boys to a birthday party and I packed up my serger that wasn't threading properly to have it looked at. After getting it fixed, I drove to a fabric store just to buy some good thread and $65 worth of fabric later, realized I hadn't even purchased the thread. I cannot just walk into a fabric store without buying something for a project.

Then around 5.30 I got a call from the gal who fixed our computer. She did an awesome job - getting rid of a virus, saving all my files to DVD's and CD's, installing new anti-spyware software and a virus protection program and even gave me a hard drive when I got scammed from someone on Craigslist. When she was leaving from working on it the first time, Holland showed her his setup in the garage with our old computer. I have no idea what was wrong with it, but he had somehow hooked it up and got the screen to come up. No working mouse, so he just clicked until he got what he wanted. He asked if she had any spare parts (luckily got a laugh from her on that one!) and she offered to take it home and tinker with it. Tonight she called and wanted to bring it by at 7. She said she couldn't fix it, so she was giving us an old Gateway she had! We also didn't have a working mouse, speakers and the DVD player was broken. She must have some fabulous stockpile of stuff! Holland was in complete heaven and I told her she would be his favorite person in the world now. You should have seen his eyes pop when she hooked up everything. She didn't even know if her speakers worked, but Holland even knew where some extra cords were in the garage. We got it to work and installed a couple games. I can't believe we have another working TV in the house. Now the kids will not bug me while I'm on the computer. She even told him if he ever wanted to take apart a computer that he needed to call her and she would help him. She didn't want him to do it by himself.

Right before she left, she said Holland asked if she wanted to trade something for the metal detector she had in her car. Never the shy one.

I'm In a Quotable Kind of Mood

So I've been pouring over websites all afternoon. I should be cleaning the schoolroom or doing laundry or reading to the kids. But I just can't get past this speech that Obama will be giving (and most schools viewing) on Tuesday when students return to school. I'm dumbfounded as to why the parents aren't even being given the choice to participate. Even more curious is why show it during the school day? Since when did Obama become School Superintendant? I emailed our school principal and asked if they were participating. If so, we'd like to opt out and if that was a problem, we'd be coming to school late. Not surprisingly, they are feeding this to the kids, complete with lesson plans from the government. Wow. Just wow. So here are some things to ponder as you send your kids back to school:

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." Thomas Jefferson

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” George Washington

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." Winston Churchill

“When governments fear the people there is liberty.

When the people fear the government there is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson

A government powerful enough to do anything FOR you, is a government powerful enough to do anything TO you

"Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." - Ronald Reagan

We Were Bound For Some Excitement

I guess things had been slowing down so we needed something to jump start our boredom. That boredom was interrupted by my sister calling to tell my our dad had had a stroke. On Tuesday afternoon, my mom had to call 911 when she realized my dad was experiencing a stroke right in front of her. She gave him aspirin while on the phone with 911. Paramedics came out and transported him to a hospital. I emailed super-hero and he came home as quickly as possible. I wanted to just drive over there, but I had all three kids and he told me to wait for him. So I sat in the car with all three kids strapped in and waited. Then when he got home, I didn't think I would be able to drive slower than 80 mph, so I asked him to drive. He can't win of course, because I complained the whole way there that he was driving too slow. Whenever I feel he's poking along at an unacceptable speed, I say "pretend we're on our way to an OSU football game". I always think that's going to work, but he doesn't find it funny.

They did an MRI and determined it was a stroke and the neurologist said there was a three hour window of opportunity for administering a certain medicine. There were risks involved (how can there not be?) and dad agreed to have the drug. They said his speech should improve, but we still haven't seen that. My cousin in CA is a speech therapist for stroke patients, so I called her up and got some great advice and heads-up on things we should be expecting from the SLP. By Tuesday night he was moved to the ICU and removed the oxygen tubes. He seemed very coherent, just unable to speak. He understood when you talked to him (of course, he's lost a lot of hearing from his years in a paper mill) just was unable to answer. We even tried letting him write something, but being without his glasses and his right hand so weak, it was illegible. When I saw him on Wednesday, he was sitting up and eating a bit of dinner.

He'll probably be there one more night and then we're off on another adventure and seeing how his speech comes back and physically what he's able to do. We're so thankful for God's protection that he wasn't driving at the time and that mom caught it so quick.