Family, Love, Literature, Crystals, and More {November and December 2019}

We enjoyed a lot of good family fun during the last two months of the Roman year.   We went through a crystal exhibit at Crystal Bridges Museum.  Here are a few of the pictures I took:

The following were amazing geometric devices that were so fun to gaze into.  It felt like you could go on forever through them.

Neat how the geometric display can be seen reflected in this crystal!

After we finished the exhibit, we went outside the museum and walked the trails:

We read the following book, which was a sweet story that involves a girl who enters the care of her aunt and uncle after the state removed her from her parents' home.

We liked that book so much and found the description of another book of hers interesting enough that I bought and downloaded it on my Kindle.  It is also told in first person by a girl whose father left her, her mother, and her brother, and they became homeless and started living out of the mother's car. 

We never failed to enjoy the winter wonders outdoors.  I took new pictures of some frostweed (Verbesina virginica).  I walked with the kids down to the icicle-laden cliffs so that they could play.

I'm happy to say that I truly have the perfect-tasting fried rice down, and not only that, but I also make the perfect Japanese white sauce, too.  I had been disappointed the first several attempts, but I'm ecstatic that I have finally mastered this.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  It is very time-consuming and labor intensive, though, to cook and refrigerate the rice, saute fresh vegetables (onion, zucchini, mushrooms, and broccoli are our favorites), scramble the eggs, fix Japanese white sauce, and fry the rice. But it is sooooo good!

And look!  I made two cheesecakes for a sabbath dessert one week—one pistachio and the other raspberry, both with homemade crusts.  They were delicious!

In the previous post, the rat Tobin was featured.  The following rat is his brother Buddha.  Carissa trains the rats to go through obstacle courses for treats.

In late December, I read the following book to the kids, since its setting is winter.  It's a ghost story, but it teaches a lesson about racism, now and historically.

William sometimes goes on longer hikes with us elsewhere, but this time the three of us hiked near home.

And we went bowling, too:

When I had all four of my babies, we enjoyed a fun hot dog and marshmallow roast:

We visited my parents and other family.  I got my dad to take a walk with Carissa and me, and we ran into the boys driving the ATV down at the boat landing (White River).  

The four girls (including my two nieces) always spend ample time hanging out:

Meg and I

Then it was back to everyday life again.  During this semester, I stayed home to work on my bachelor's degree online and did some substitute teaching.  Two mornings of the week, Carissa has on-campus classes and drops the kids off at school on her way. I always see them on their way at the door.  

Sometimes I go for a walk and only one child joins me.  Often the child is Elizabeth.

Trust and Liv went through a brief spell of wanting to go hang out on the roof of the house.  

Trusten was assigned a cell project.  He was able to choose whether he wanted to do an animal cell or plant cell.  He and I worked on it together, and it was fun.  He really memorized the cell parts and what they did with ease.  He's always seemed to enjoy biology.  Hmmm, wonder from whom he gets that. ;-)  

I made up some sort of cake bread/cake that I think was both vegan and gluten-free.  Oh yeah, it was flourless, I think.  It contained banana and avocado, chocolate, and I don't remember what else.  I've got the recipe saved somewhere, if anyone wanted to contact me for it. It was somewhat good.

We were able to give the kids winter solstice gifts:

We also celebrated Elizabeth's eighth birthday.  My baby is getting so big!  

She likes to get cakes half vanilla and half chocolate.  She eats a bit of both.  She requested the candy decorations this time around.

Her class sang "Happy birthday" to her:

My biggest baby passed his driving test!  We left there and went to get his license.

Elizabeth made a Rudolph reindeer for art in school:

I made some sort of coconut cream pie that was a lot better than any sort I'd made before:

At the tail end of the month, we visited family again:

2019 was a pretty good year.  We certainly dealt with some challenges, but we enjoyed a lot of good fun and learned plenty of new things.

Until next time...

What We Did... (December 2014)

December through the first half of January was very stressful for us.  Nathan's dad was admitted to the hospital, his life endangered, and he had part of his leg amputated.  Then he went to rehab.  Though we all all went down to visit once, there were a few other times when Nathan went alone for many days at a time, leaving me as a single parent during a very rough time, as I'll soon explain.

The time we all traveled, we traveled separately from Nathan, because the boys had a dental appointment that day. 

This was Trusten's first dental check-up at seven-and-a-half.  He had no cavities.  It was William's second visit, and he had no cavities (he had one at his first visit at the age of nine), but he's had a tooth come out before the primary has fallen out, so we're about to have to get that pulled.

We left the evening the day following the dental appointment.  I snapped the above picture while fueling up.  We took Atlas Dog with us.  See his black head?

The following pictures were all taken by my momma of the kids while they stayed with her one day.

William was not acting like himself.  Usually a very helpful and sweet boy, he was extremely irritable and didn't want to do anything.  He refused to do his school work, and he didn't want to do anything to help around the house.  He also complained of hurting joints and being tired.  I kept thinking, "Lyme disease.  He's got Lyme disease," but he's had hurting joints before due to growth spurts. And I figured maybe his moodiness and lethargy was due to changing hormones, since he's at that age.  I asked him whether it was serious, because I ought to take him to the doctor if it was, and early on he'd say no.  But then when he'd complain about things, I told him to go lie down in bed if he really didn't feel well...and he did!  And he started sleeping in later.  I became more concerned, and when I told him I was going to take him to the doctor, he was then agreeable.  I requested a blood draw to test for Lyme, since that is what I intuitively suspected, plus juvenile RA.  They did those and a couple other tests of their choosing.

The nurse who took William's blood was amazed that he thought nothing of it.  Well, that boy takes pain like a champ.  Thankfully it wasn't Olivia, or someone would have to sedate her just to keep her still and quiet.  LOL

It took thirteen days for the results to come back.  The Lyme test came back positive.  We went out immediately to pick up antibiotics.  It was the first time in his eleven-and-a-half years he'd ever taken conventional antibiotics, and I'm so very thankful, because along with the fact that he's had mostly only organic food during his lifetime, I believe the antibiotics worked to top capacity, which was very important, considering he must have been infected for over a month by the time he started them. He had to take them twice daily for 21 days, and there were several restrictions, like not eating iron or taking mineral supplements or eating dairy within two hours of taking the medication and avoid direct sunlight.  Since he was still highly irritable for the first half of that duration, it was hell getting him to take them and follow all the rules.  We were both relieved when he started feeling better.

My momma had given me this cool hood-with-scarf when we had visited, and I took a picture for her while sitting outside the laundromat, waiting for our clothes to wash, because we were waiting on a part so Nathan could fix our washing machine.  I call it my Red Riding Hood.  :-)

I met a dear friend at Barnes and Noble, because she moved farther away from me, and I miss her!  The youngest kids had fun playing with her sweet son, Jaxon, while we talked.  I think William read.

Nathan spent more time away this month than home with us.  When he was gone, the kids slept in our bedroom with me.  One time William went with Nathan.

The girls were thrilled to sleep with me.  They even brought their My Little Pony blanket to serve as our extra covering.

When Nathan came back, we celebrated Elizabeth's birthday.  It was her third birthday, so we visited Promised Land Animal Park, which is where we normally go for our children's third birthdays.

Elizabeth loves chocolate like I do, so I made her a homemade chocolate cake and some homemade chocolate hot fudge, and I bought Alden's vanilla ice cream.

Also I paid for the materials to administer a standardized test (the CAT) to William.  This isn't required, but we were curious.  I chose a sixth grade level, because for his age, that is what he'd be in, even though he's just now doing sixth grade math, since he's been slow in that.  He was terribly stressed during it, having never taken any such test before, and he kept panicking about the time.  However he ended up scoring well above average in reading, slightly above average in writing, and slightly below average in math (having not even learned some of the things on the test in math, yet). 

William also enrolled in his first Minecraft Homeschool course, since he loves playing Minecraft.  He plays as Aptenodytes88 (the penguin genus that contains emperors and kings; penguins are his favorite animal; 8 is his favorite number).  For his first course, he chose Redstone Academy, in which he learned about engineering and the different branches.  He watched videos, took quizzes, wrote essays, and built things on the MCHS server.  He scored a 93 for the course total. 

Furthermore, I was about ready once again to find a speech therapist for Elizabeth, when once again (every time I am about to take her for help), she had a burst of improvement.  She really exploded around her third birthday (not uncommon) in words.  Now (as of April 2015) she will repeat about any word spoken.  Around half of what she says is echolalia (but that's still a major improvement over very little at all), but she also talks plenty about things on her own.  She has quite a fascination with letters.  I've wondered from time to time whether she will turn out to be somewhat hyperlexic, but I really can't say for sure now.  She shows plenty of signs of being a happy, highly social, high-functioning autistic.  I had speech problems, and William had different speech problems, and we've both turned out to be fine and get by well.  I fully expect Elizabeth to turn out the same way, even if she may end up needing some speech therapy.

We enjoyed a wonderful walk during the second half of December.  Here are a few of the pictures from the walk and picnic:

We enjoyed our walking and picnic time together and loved our finds.  I posted about the mushrooms in the early fall to early winter mushrooms post.

I also finished another college course.  I scored a 100 in psychology, just as I did last semester in sociology.  Next semester I'm only taking a second 8-weeks course, and if that works out well for me, I'll start taking two courses each semester, as I'm able, a first 8-weeks and a second 8-weeks.  I'm also planning to take the CLEP exam sometime soon for the analyzing literature course, which is one of the required English credits.  That will save me some time not to have to take that course.

Trusten is doing well in all his studies.  Some days he fools around and skips out on doing his work altogether, but he does extremely well on the days he does do his things.  He's working on language lessons and sometimes journal writing, reading biology lessons and geography. 

That's all I'll say for this month.  I was hoping to be caught up on my back posts, but the 8-weeks course I'm currently taking (here in April 2015) keeps me busy.

Until next time...