We recently noticed a different vehicle in the driveway across the street. Turns out it is a painter and he was putting a mural up on their garage. It has been very cool watching the different layers go on. He has probably stopped by 10 different times to add more detail to the garage. (It actually looks like he has one more section...the black strip just below the river. I would think more grass or flowers will go in there.) The boys have really enjoyed watching him and going over there to get a close up view.

Joseph had a Mother's Day tea recently at his preschool. The class sang some songs and then served the mothers cookies and fruit.

Here is a picture of a card he made for me, as well as a small pot of pansies.

This was the inside of the card...complete with Joseph's answers to some questions from his teacher.

The weather has gotten cooler again - perfect for crawling under the blankets and watching a movie! Although we have not been afforded that luxury yet. Maybe this weekend. We have nothing planned for the weekend except church activities! I love the quiet weekends. Lots of r&r.

A long rambling post.......

The boys and I recently attended a short presentation at the public library on 3-D printing.  I have heard stories about them and what they can do but never really understood it all. (The first thing I remember hearing about them was a 5th grader who printed all the parts of a prosthetic hand, screwed it all together and then gave to a classmate ~ all for about $2,000.)   Seeing it in person made so much more sense to me.  The one at the library was the smallest, most basic one.  (They received a grant to buy 3 of them, at $1,500 a piece!).  The 'ink' was fed into the printer through a small tube.  (Their printers can just print in one color but of course the fancier ones can print in multi color.)  The printer prints from the bottom up and these particular printers use a plastic material.  (Lots of materials can be used, including steel.)  The printer has a picture of the object (either downloaded or scanned in) and then it horizontally slices the object into 1,000s of layers.  Then the ink is piped in and layer by layer the plastic is laid.  Truly mind boggling.  The library printers can only print up to 5 1/2 by 5 1/2 inch object and it takes about 3 hours.  (I wish I had had my camera.)

Nike has printed shoes for athletes and they are obviously a perfect fit.  They are hoping to soon start using 3-D printing for organ transplants - imagine being able to get all the intricacies of a patients heart exactly right (not sure what material they would use for it).  It is being used to print steel plates that are inserted during surgeries.  They even use the 3-D printing to 'duplicate' the beloved pet (weird in my opinion).  You have the capabilities to print out a missing piece of hardware or that little thingy ma-jig that broken on your whatever it is.  Scientist are currently experimenting with piping food into the printers so that the astronauts can print out real food (think layering pizza) and then it cooks as it is created.

They have even created printers that print from the top down with liquid resin.  There is a 'bowl' of liquid resin and somehow light passes through it and then the printer begins pulling the object out of the resin and it is formed as it hits the air.  This type of printer can print things in about 6 minutes!  Can you tell I was totally fascinated by it all?  If you are near a local library, stop in and ask them if they have a printer or know of one in the area.  You should check it out.  I am sure there are lots of time lapse videos on google.  Our library is trying to figure out how to charge for the printing (probably so much per gram) then they will let the public use them.

Joseph bless his little heart started this school year with 4 therapies a week and he just 'graduated' from another one, so he is down to his 2 private therapies a week.  Wahoo.  He is going to see an occupational therapist on Monday because one of his speech therapists is concerned about some visual perception issues.  As Joseph is describing some things to her, it is almost as if he is not seeing it correctly.  When he was tested a few years ago for this, he did not have enough vocabulary for it to be effective.  (Even as I type that word, I am remembering back to the lessons Benjamin and I did on the proper uses of effect and affect ~ still not sure I could always pick the correct word.)  Anyway, will be interesting to see if the therapist finds anything.  As Joseph is moving into the reading stage, we certainly don't want him having trouble seeing part to whole pieces of a word.  (One of the examples the speech therapist gave me is that she showed him a hand drawn picture of a girl smiling.  She had circles on her face representing freckles.  He was not able to see the freckles as part of the whole pictures, but instead saw them as random balls that were falling off her face.  It is the very subtle things that can create lots of problems later on.)

Benjamin recently went back to the orthodontist.  I think we are ready to proceed with more hardware.  In a few weeks he will go back and get 4 braces put on his top teeth.  They are still waiting for some of his baby teeth to come out.  The ortho is wondering about having a few baby teeth pulled because the roots are about 3mm long and there is starting to be some decay because he has had them for so long.  All of my boys are so slow in loosing their teeth.  We go to the dentist in a few weeks so will see what the dentist says.  Jacob lost his two top teeth a while ago and only one of them is half way in.  Not sure where the other one is!

The boys and I have finalized our plans for a long weekend in South Dakota this summer.  My boys love Christian music and have wanted to attend a concert for a long time (an interest I am happy to put money into).  There is a 3 day outdoor concert in Rapid City mid July and we are road tripping.  A friend from North Dakota will meet us over there and we have rented a 2 bedroom house for 4 nights!  The boys and I have started watching the artists' Youtube music videos, so we can learn the words.  (I think concerts are way more fun when you can sing and dance along.)  The boys have not been impressed with my dance moves though.  I have great visions of dancing away at the concert and watching them hide from embarrassment.  Oh the fun we will have.  One of their favorite parts of the day is we have 'worship' time after dinner, where they each pick a music video and we sit at the table and sing along ~ although usually the only one allowed to sing out loud is the one who picked the song!

Had a very quiet weekend.

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO MY NIECE, KELSEY, WHO GRADUATED WITH HONORS FROM WESTERN MICHIGAN TODAY WITH A DEGREE IN SPECIAL EDUCATION.
(Not bad pictures from 1500 miles away, thanks to internet!)

It is almost May!!!

We are on the home stretch with school. Benjamin has completed his language arts and look at what that entailed.

As I look back over the school year, we have changed our course probably every other week. Our days now look nothing like they did 7 months ago. I have really learned a lot about how he operates best. The math and language program we used did not even have a teaching aspect to it. It was just questions. So, you learned the material by doing, instead of listening to it being explained and then doing. I really think that works best for him. As much as he loves to read, it is very difficult for him to 'school' books. Since we switched to this curriculum later in the school year, it is doubtful we will finish with the math component, which is fine. The great thing about homeschooling, you can pick up where you left off.

One of the things that people recommend when you go from public school to home school, is to take off (unschool) 1 month for each year they have been in school. It takes this long to de-program how you see learning. I get that now, having been through the first year. Some of my friends think I am doing my child such a disservice by not having written grades and tests. However, I know that those two things can really throw him off. I also know that he hates to write. He would rather tell me for 15 minutes what he learned than write a paragraph. I strongly believe in the ability to write well, so still trying to figure that one out. Maybe next fall he will be more apt to learn about writing. He typically writes a letter a week to work on spelling and handwriting. Neither of which seem to be getting better :-). Just this past week we tried something different. He dictated the letter to me and I typed it. Then he wrote it. I finally realized that he can't learn spelling if he is always writing the words wrong (and he is not the type to ask how to spell a word, he would just rather spell phonetically). Plus it gave me a great way to talk with him about different ways to say things and how to put words together so they sound more polished. He really enjoyed writing the letters this week!

I have come across a science curriculum that he loves! It is a huge program put together by a college professor who has also been a NASA scientist. She loves to teach and is very hands on. We were introduced to her through a free online science class she put together. Benjamin has participated in 2 of them and really enjoyed both of them. There are of course different packages she offers, one being a 5 year curriculum that comes with 90% of science experiment materials, videos, tests, you name it. I opted instead to buy some individual CDs that will cover about 3 years worth of stuff. Somewhat spendy, but she has handouts, videos, experiments, shopping lists, etc. They are self guided. I figure since it is something he is really into, never hurts to spend the money. I might not get him to do the worksheets, etc but I know he will absorb every bit of it. With the last online science class she did, I printed off 7 pages of fill in the blanks. He did not use them, yet when she randomly selected a question to ask, he knew the answer. I see him wanting to watch these videos over and over.

Another subject he really enjoys is history. Just the other day I was reading a book to Jacob and asked Benjamin about a certain 'smaller' war and whether it was in the American Revolution or Civil War. He knew the answer and could list some of the smaller battles of both. Just from watching History channel. He even asked me the other night (after school hours) if he could watch history videos.

I have tried to encourage Benjamin to think about some of his passions and if he could earn some money doing them. We talked a little bit about a business plan and why that is important and what that can look like. I think he is leaning toward photography. I told him he needs to get familiar with the camera and all of the different shooting modes. Once that happens, we will contact some friends to see if he could spend 30 minutes shooting their kids, do some basic editing, download pics to a flash drive and then hand it over. They get some pics of the kids and Benjamin can get 15 bucks or so in his pocket. He does not need a lot of money to get him motivated to learn more and more and improve his skills. Plus our neighbors next door are photographers and maybe could teach him a lot.

Just excited to have more of a clue for the fall with homeschooling. There is so much more valuable stuff to be taught outside of the traditional classroom.

We have had some beautiful weather lately and have parked the car and been riding bikes where ever we can! I have also discovered some bike trails not too far from us. One smaller town probably has 10 miles of trails so wanting to get the boys out and riding.

Off to cook dinner! The boys are outside and have been spending 3-4 hours at a time outside!! Yay for them and for me!

Just a few pictures.....

Recently I learned of Appleseedinfo.org. It is a nonprofit organization that brings history and riflemanship together. It is sponsored by the American Revolutionary War Veterans Association and classes are held all over the US. It is an intense 2 day training. We went out to observe and possibly participate.

It was held on some private land that was an old homestead.

All the kids got free shirts.

Jacob was the only one that was really interested.  The other two boys and I hung around for the 'history' lesson at lunch time.  Very interesting and lots of facts about Hancock, Adams, Revere, etc.

They shot many, many rounds and learned about safety, sighting, yardage, wind, chambering, etc.

He had his safety goggles and ear protection in.

All of his groups of 5 shots were pretty consistent.  I think they finally got the sights correct.

On April 15th, we woke up to about 8 inches of snow!

Of course we were up in the 60s today, so it melted quickly.

Benjamin finished up his 2nd year of robotics. This time they downloaded a program that actually ran the robot ~ I still can't wrap my head around all this technology.

The robots were dueling...not sure how they knew who won.

I recently gave Benjamin a short test to try to determine his 'intellectual style'. There were 7 different styles and his highest was music, followed by linguistics, spatial visual and then bodily kinesthetic. The music really surprised me. However, he has been listening to internet radio while he does his work and somehow focuses. (I constantly find myself wanting to turn it down). I need to do some reading over the summer about how to incorporate the other 3 into his studies. I have already started thinking about curriculum for the fall. I have figured out that the 2 areas I really need to focus on are math and writing/language arts (sentence structure, writing process). The music, history and science are things that he loves and easily soaks up when exposed to them.

Another quiet week on the horizon. AWANA is now finished, as is robotics, so no extra-curriculars right now. Hopefully just lots of playing outside!

We have been moving some things around at the house.  I love how this kid finds all the crazy outside the box things.  He made his bed for a few nights in the closet.  He loved having his own little hole in which to sleep.  You probably can't see it, but on the left are all of his stuffed animals ~ neatly stacked beside him

We all went out for some shooting practice recently.  I don't think you can ever expose kids too much to proper gun handling.

Here are a few more pictures from the health fair a couple of weekends ago.  This was set up by the highway patrol.  People could put on some googles that would impair their vision as if they had been drinking alcohol.  Then they had to walk a line, pick up keys and place in a cup and then pick up a tennis ball and place on an orange cone.  It was a great opportunity to talk with them, once again, about the dangers of drinking and drugs.  I think it surprised their little minds how hard it was.  The goggled ranged from .06 to something like 2.4 blood alcohol content.  It was interesting to see what the vision of someone 3 times the legal limit was like.  No wonder there are so many drunk driving accidents.  You see like 3 or 4 of everything!

We had a pretty quiet weekend and looks like a quiet week ahead. Really enjoy the slower paced days! The warmer weather (although lots of wind) has returned and the boys have been spending lots of time outside playing.

I have stumbled upon a blog of a (fairly) local family that spends lots of time traveling and exploring the state. Excited to have a list of adventures within an hour or two for us to start exploring. It really does not take much for us...some rocks, water and sun and the boys will be entertained for hours and mom can take a book and chair along!

The second graders at Jacob's school was recently treated to an art lesson by a local artist. J was quite excited to create something from chalk.

Benjamin amazed me with his memory. He recently took first place at the AWANA bible quizzing. One of my greatest desires is for my kids to be learning God's word and hiding it in their heart. They are such little sponges during the younger years. We recently found in a stack of my books, a Bible Quiz book my Mammaw gave me dated in 1991. The boys loved testing their knowledge. Benjamin particularly enjoyed it. He is currently reading through the Power Bibles and amazed me with how the stories are coming together for him. Here is B with his medal from the quizzing.

The local hospital has a health fair once a year and the boys enjoy going. This year there was a egg decorating station.

There was a table with an buffalo leg on it. The kids got to explore it and look at tendons, muscles, etc.

The hands on spine. Jacob was telling the lady all about it :-)

40 days left of school ~ at least for Jacob. Not sure if Benjamin will be finished by then! None of the boys are doing spring sports, so pretty quiet and uneventful at our house!

The snow is melting up at the resort and JR will probably be able to start some of his landscape projects by late April. Hopefully at least one of the boys can go to work with him each week. It is hard to teach them to manage money when they don't have any money to manage. (The have never latched on to the 'jobs' at home ~ although the chores are not an option for them.)

Blessed Easter!

Luke 24:5
"Why do you seek the living among the dead?"
The stone has been rolled away and the tomb is empty. Upon that is what gives me hope! Our Jesus is the only One who has ever risen from the grave. All the other 'gods' are still in the grave!

In Joseph's preschool they created a tomb scene, with real grass. We have had fun watching the grass grow over the last week.

Not to be outdone, Jacob created a tomb scene out of legos...maybe a new tradition?

Praying it was a hope filled day for you!

Two park pictures...

We recently celebrated 8 years! For his birthday we picked up 8 other boys after school and headed to the university rec center. Quite the chaos. I must always remember, the fewer the choices, the better! They had fun though! (Did not get too many pictures). I think bowling was probably the highlight. (So nice having them all old enough that they can handle the ball by themselves.)

5 of the boys spent the night.  Never again.  They had fun but there were 2 of them feeding off each other and they were up way too late and up way too early.

Here was my leprechaun from St. Patty's Day!

We are suppose to hit 70 tomorrow!

The other night one of the boys came into our room at 5:15am. He knelt beside the bed and asked me if we were going to Australia the next day. After I told him no, he went straight back to bed. I assumed he had had some vivid dream about an upcoming trip. however he did not remember getting out of bed. Just amazes me how hard kids can sleep.

Gearing up for another quiet weekend. Boys should be playing outside most of the weekend, which means I can finish up getting the house in order ~ I am throwing out and moving things around.

Now I feel like I have lots of pictures but not the energy to upload them all!

Last week was spring break. We stayed pretty close to home, except one night. The younger 2 boys and I got a hotel room. We ended up taking one of Jacob's friends with us and our 15 year old neighbor Zane. I was concerned setting out because the pool was really small but they had a water slide. However, the kids had a blast. There were 2 other local families there and everyone played and played and played.

This is our neighbor Zane, with Jacob.  Zane brought his GoPro, so everyone had a lot of fun playing with it.

My toothless wonder.  His 2 front teeth took forever to come out and now the adult teeth are taking forever to come in).  He loved the hot tub.

Joseph finally and forever lost the life jacket!  He did awesome and even ventured down the slide without his googles, which is huge!  All of the boys have a hard time swimming without them.

Thankful to God that we survived without major injury.  It was outings like the hotel that always remind me that God can take much better care of my boys than I can.  Joseph had 3 mishaps that could have easily resulted in an ER visit.  Once he was walking up the slide stairs and slipped.  He hit his ribs pretty hard on the stairs.  A second time he was coming down the slide and got turned around and slammed pretty hard, head first into the side.  (Zane saw it happen and was freaking out because of how hard he hit).  Then Joseph was in the hot tub and they have a small built in seat for younger kids.  He went to sit down in it and missed.  He flipped backward out of the hot tub and down 2 steps.  Fortunately I was in the hot tub and did not grasp the fullness of what happened.  Thankfully he walked away from them all!

(On a side note, Benjamin had gone to work with JR while we were at the hotel.  JR had told Benjamin to go back to the truck and get something.  Fortunately, Benjamin disobeyed and dawdled.  Had Benjamin been prompt in doing what he was told, he would have been crushed by about 30 pounds of ice falling 20 feet off of a roof.  It scared JR when he heard it slide but when he realized Benjamin was not there, utter relief and a sense of God's in control.)

After we left the hotel, we ran home for an hour and then headed out to a park to meet some other friends.  Boys took their bikes.  Always neat every year to see how they have gotten older and things that were difficult last year are a piece of cake this year!

Notice the 'no snow' even in the foothills in the background.  All of the snow is gone, except the highest elevations.  I don't think we have had any snowfall for the month of March.

While at the park, Jbird had a really close call too.  He was climbing on some equipment about 8 feet up and fell really hard.  He ended up with a nasty bruise, but again, God's hand was in that moment.

I was recently talking with one of Joseph's speech therapists.  She had just recently tested him again.  He is scoring in the 7th% for kids his age.  However, his errors from a year ago were at 48, 6 months ago his errors were 22 and this most recent test his errors were 12.  The kid is doing awesome.  She said all of his errors are predictable, which is very unusual for apraxic kids.  So thankful!  Most all of his errors are related to 'ch' and 'sh'.  Makes it very easy to work with him.  This next Tuesday we register him for kindergarten.  Hard to believe!

You can tell from my lack of posts that it has been pretty humdrum around here. (Which I am not complaining.)

We are in the middle of spring break. I am heading out today with the younger 2. We are getting a hotel room for the night so the boys can play. Benjamin is working with Jose the next 2 days!

Our weather has been amazing. We were close to 70 a few days ago. Needless to say, unless we get some really wet weather in the next 2 months, we will be seeing lots of forest fires this summer. I am about ready to put away the snow gear but I know as soon as I do, the snow will come.

Next week is the last week of basketball for Benjamin. I think he has really enjoyed it. So the organized activities will die down but all the outdoor things should pick up. The boys have already been out bike riding, throwing the football and baseball. We have been on a few walks (Joseph loves to dribble the basketball while we walk.) I am back at the gym consistently, as is JR. The 9k race I did late April of last year is now being held in early June. The boys have told me they want to participate in the 1 mile family run/walk. Hopefully we can start 'training'.

Monday is Jacob's birthday. He has requested for his birthday breakfast chocolate chip waffles with whip cream and cherries, along with sausage and orange juice! That kid will be flying high at school. He wants to take some cupcakes in for his class treat ~ gonna try my hand at some camo cupcakes this year. Then on Friday the 20th, we are picking up 7 of his friends after school and heading to the SUB at the university. We will do some bowling, shuffleboard, play station and pool, along with pizza. Then head back to the house for cake. The 3 boys that are able to, will spend the night. Should be a full night!

Now that the weather is warming up I promise to take some pictures and post them in the next couple of days!

We have been in the mid 50s most of this week! Just crazy for mid February. Those are usually some of our coldest and darkest days, but it has been sunny and warm! I just need to remember this if winter shows up again!

Been quiet around here.

Tomorrow is Jacob's last basketball game.

Benjamin's layup is looking really good - his twice weekly basketball practices are paying off.

Things have been going so well with JR and his business that the accountant strongly urged us to incorporate (from LLC), so we are starting that paperwork!

Benjamin got contacts today! He was shocked at 'how' they worked. He has done pretty well putting them in and taking them out. If all goes well, we will order some real ones in 2 weeks.

Joseph is doing so well with speech that he is dropping his Thursday speech ~ now we are down to three times a week.

Jacob has told me he wants to play flag football in the fall.

Benjamin has started working on his first song (note reading) with the trumpet.

We are beginning to think about Jacob's 8th bday. I have told the boys that we are scaling Christmas way back and gonna start doing more with birthdays.

I have recently gotten a subscription to Clean Eating magazine, so committing myself to trying 1 recipe a week out of the magazine. Baby steps. Although we have cut out a lot of the 'snack times' during the days and the boys are actually eating more at meals. Amazing how that works.

Plans are underway for a trip down south.

We will register Joseph for Kindergarten in a few weeks. At this point, Benjamin will homeschool next year while the other 2 are in public school. Jacob is excited to show little brother the ropes around the school, as well as ride his bike to school with him.

Benjamin has open gym time once a week with older homeschoolers (8 years and up). This is something I initiated and we love it. I probably enjoy running around just as much as the 20 kids we have showing up. Before long we can move it outside!

I am gonna try my hand at making chocolate bowls for our ice cream dessert after Valentine dinner (probably nothing more than a huge breakfast spread for dinner, complete with bacon). Then on Sunday I will try to take the boys to see Big Hero 6 at the campus theatre.

Last night when I went to bed, the temperature was 50 degrees at 11:30pm. We have had so much warm weather that most of the snow is gone. The seven day forecast is mid 40s to low 50s. I love it but could mean lots of forest fires.

This kiddo finally lost his 2 front teeth.

One of JR's clients recently gave him a down jacket that is used for Antarctica research by scientist.  It quite the jacket...made of goose down.  Really heavy and can only imagine how warm one would stay.  The boys loved trying it on

We conducted a 'science' experiment of sorts.  I was trying to teach the kids about how dirty hands can actually be.  I had the boys hold a piece of bread with their dirty hands.  It took a lot longer than expected to start to see mold (like 7 weeks - I am guessing it is because of the lower humidity up here)

Pretty uneventful week. Nothing but our usual stuff...4 therapies, 3 basketball practices and 1 trumpet lesson (I tried to come up with a 2). Boys are all doing well. We have had some hiccups with homeschooling lately but looks like we have turned a corner.

We enjoyed the Super Bowl last weekend. We went to some friends house. I watched more of the game than the boys did. Lots of food and running around. I look forward to the day when we all can sit and watch a football game together. Although all of us watched the last 2 minutes - what a game.