Monday we had to get library books for Science and History! So after Bible lessons we took off. First we harvested at the garden, then met some friends at the library, and then got groceries. Made it home by lunch but I was exhausted! We ate, did a quiet time and then finished up our lessons in the afternoon before Robert got home. I still haven't adjusted my grocery shopping schedule to fit with homeschooling. Frustrating!
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It might not be fair to call these brownies. They are more like very moist cake. I found some recipes, tweaked and compared them and came up with this. Dark Chocolate Zucchini Brownies 2 eggs 3/4 cup of raw sugar 1/4 unsweetened applesauce 1 Tbl vanilla 1/2 cup of White Whole Wheat Flour 1/2 cup of Almond flour 1 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 cup of cocoa powder 2 cups of shredded zucchini 1 cup of chocolate chips Stir eggs, sugar, applesauce, and vanilla together and let sit. Stir together flours, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder together in a separate bowl. Add dry ingredients to wet and stir till just moistened. Fold in shredded zucchini and pour into a 9x9 dish. Top with chocolate chips. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. The kids loooove them! And because I worked at making them with less wheat flour the carbs aren't quite as bad, so I can enjoy them and not keep gaining weight! I'm sure they could be made with all almond flour but as a result they would be a bit more dry. Which wouldn't be awful because they are very moist! They are more dark chocolate tasting than sweet but just sweet enough to make you want more!
I think they will be a repeat around here! Especially since my friend and I's garden is pouring out zucchini faster than we can harvest! We shredded a bunch of zucchini in my food processor on Saturday and ended up with 60 cups to freeze! So there will be lots of experimenting with baking and cooking with zucchini around our house! This week was my first week to work really hard at staying on schedule and doing all our subjects on the day we need to do them. Monday we did very well. We even made a trip to the garden to harvest veggies before we started our lessons. We did everything we scheduled for: Bible, History, Typing, Math, and Reading. All went pretty well! After quiet time we took The Boy to his speech eval and that went well too. Now we are waiting on the call of when we get to meet with his therapist and she will tell us details about his phonological disorder and settle on a plan of action. Which reminds me! We were reading Genesis 11 on Monday, The Tower of Babel. After I finished reading The Boy said, "That's what's wrong with me! I speak a different language!" Hey! I was stoked because my 4 year listened and understood the Bible! Ha! Tuesday was much the same! We got all our studies done(Bible, Science, Writing, Math, Reading) and then we babysat a friend's little girl after nap. I started feeling down and like a failure though. Not 100% sure where that came from. It seems like if homeschooling is really hard I feel like a failure because I can't do it right and if it's going well I feel like a failure because if it's going so well then I must be missing something! Grr... Wednesday we had a Back to School party with two other homeschooling families! So we got all our chores done and Bible and History done. Then we had to head to the party! It was loads of fun! We played educational games, the kids won prizes, we ate lunch together and all the kids got "Back to School" pictures done. We also plan on doing regular field trips with these families and we are going to do a group study on Scientific Investigation! That will be in a couple more weeks and our family will be hosting those lessons. Thursday I had a chiropractor appointment in a town 20 minutes away to get to. So I clipped coupons and we set off at 7:30 in the morning to hit Target on the way. After the chiropractor we had to run by Best Buy to return something, then the farm to buy eggs. We got home by lunch time and I was planning on doing our lessons after nap but I slipped down into a funk and was just feeling down. I didn't want to do ANYTHING! Including mother, let alone teach! So I prayed after nap and texted Robert to get encouragement. And eventually decided that I should do what I most don't want to do while joyfully praising God. And until I could do that I was not going to be much of a mom. So the kids got to watch tv for a couple of hours while I cleaned all the bathrooms, vacuumed the stairs and under the couch cushions and cleaned the walls with my headphones in, listening to worship and praying. Blessedly, I came out of my worship session with a better attitude and an empty day of chores for Friday since I did them early! : )
Friday we made up for lost time! I woke after a fitful night of sleep but God's grace is sufficient because I had energy all day! We did Bible, writing, science, Math, and Reading! AND a friend who's husband just deployed brought her boys over for an impromptu play date and lunch! She happens to be awesome about not distracting me from my kids and so she was very helpful and I got to minister to her at this hard time. So there is a our week and I apologize for not taking more pictures! I gotta work on that! Today our little guy turns 2!! Gasp! To see the birth story here is the link here on our blog: http://coffmanfamily.weebly.com/1/post/2011/09/we-have-a-new-baby-brother.html
And for our slideshow (that is not G rated) here is the video that is posted on my midwife's website: http://morningglorybirth.com/Morning_Glory_Childbirth_Services/Videos.html Monday was our first day getting up at 6! Daddy started back to work this week and needed to leave around 7, so in order to get to eat breakfast with him we needed to be up and eating by 6:30. In our schedule I allowed for plenty of time for cleaning up breakfast and morning chores before Bible lesson. Turns out I didn't need that much time! We were done with breakfast, dressed, chores done, kitchen cleaned, and Bible done before 8! Talk about accomplishment! I don't expect every morning to go so smoothly but it was nice for that morning! We got History and the Boys' morning room time, sensory bin, Typing for Tender, and Math completely finished before I had to start lunch! Woo Hoo! We talked about Taxation without Representation for History. Each girl received a bag of 18 dimes and throughout the day I demanded absurd taxing for different things. "Taxation for people sitting on the couch!" "Extra dime for those who insist on ketchup with lunch!" and so on and so forth. Bryse, who thought it wasn't a big deal for the British to demand extra taxes from the Colonists, quickly changed her tone! She was pretty rebellious to the taxing. I had to threaten to sick my troops (The Boy and Wild Man) on her several times! Wild Man even had a red shirt on for his role! Ha! Tuesday we had a rough morning. I hadn't folded laundry Monday night because I went to work in the garden instead. So I folded laundry during the morning chore time. The Boy helped me. Then Him and Hurricane decided it was a great day to break every rule we have. So they both ended up stuck by Mama for the rest of the morning for a discipline I like to call Lock Down. You have to stay in the same room with Mom for an extended amount of time. We got to Bible lessons, Science, Typing, and Math. I postponed Reading because we had a LOT of cleaning to do and I was trying to get all of the weeks chores done early in the week so that we can hang out with our Memaw and Papa when they get here without the work! ; ) The morning improved after a few hours of Lock Down for my two little ones, though! Wednesday was our last play date for the Summer. And since the mosquitos here are absolutely NUTS this year, we decided to do indoors. So we hosted! Which meant, no lessons at all! Also, lots of cleaning and preparing for Memaw and Papa to visit! : ) Thursday we got our Bible lessons done before we took Memaw and Papa into Manhattan to get some errands ran. And then that night we had Wild Man's 2nd Birthday party! Friday was a slow day, praise the Lord! We got to our Bible lessons, Math, Typing, and for the first time, Writing! I had lost the packet of worksheets that comes with the Writing curriculum so I had to order those. Everything went well but I was exhausted. Laid down with Cal for a little bit during nap and got a bit of rest.
Anyway! Here are some pics from this week. Today (Saturday) is Robert and I's 11th anniversary! It is the first anniversary that we have been together for in three years! The Lord has blessed us with a babysitter for the night and we are headed to a Bed and Breakfast in a couple hours! So I gotta go get ready! : ) We officially started easing into our school year this week! Here's what it looked like, what I learned, and what the kids learned! Monday we did our Bible lesson after breakfast and chores. Then we went to the library to stock up on our Science and History books for the next three weeks' lessons. Mainly Revolutionary war and Living things. I decided we need to graduate from our library book bag to the wagon because my shoulder can only carry so much weight and still keep up with Wild Man! The wagon was perfection!! Not only did Wild Man stick close to it but it carried our 20-some books with ease! After the library our van needed a bath and vacuuming so I pulled the wagon onto the grass for the kids to read while I cleaned the van. Because of those errands we only got two subjects done on Monday. When we got home we rushed to eat lunch, get the boys down for nap and then me and girls did our Reading lesson. Tuesday we succeeded by starting the day with Bible again. We used to do Bible during breakfast but with Daddy heading back to work we are going to be more rushed at breakfast and I have developed different lessons for the school year. So we moved it to be after breakfast and chores. Here are the kiddos at the table practicing their weekly Bible verse Tuesday morning. We didn't have any big errands to run on Tuesday so we got to three subjects! Bible, Science, and Math! I learned a lesson with Science that I shouldn't try to get quite so much done in one day. I have prepared a Living Things lapbook and we did the first mini book for that called 7 Characteristics of Living Things. Then we made our grass heads. It doesn't sound like much but it took us well over an hour and a half to finish all of it. Then we rushed into lunch again and did Math afterward. Tender enjoyed her Math curriculum very much! Hurricane was unhappy with the book I chose for her. She said it's too easy. I promised her that if she buzzed through the book and completed it quickly then I would buy her a curriculum like Tender's only it will be at a 2nd grade level. We'll see what happens there.
Wednesday was playdate day. I was busy all morning doing chores, cleaning, making breakfast, and packing a picnic lunch. So we didn't get to any lessons. After naptime I let the kids watch tv but they had to choose from the educational films I got from the library or are on netflix that go along with our lessons. So we squeezed that in at least! Thursday we were planning on going to a water park but it was too rainy and cold. So we stayed home for the morning. We got our Bible and History lessons completed. During the morning I learned that our normal cleaning list for Thursdays was not going to work for the school year. Will probably have to move some chores to Saturday instead. Then, to make up for missing the water park we took the kids to a movie that afternoon. Friday we had all day to work. Robert is still working hard in the yard so the kids wanted to help him. I promised they would get to in between our lessons. I'm trying to allow 15 minutes of play in between each. We started the day with Bible again and that went well. A small break followed by Science. Which was mainly just reading library books about the characteristics of living things. Then the girls took worksheets outside for finding and listing Living and Non-Living things. After some more outside play we did Math and then ate lunch. Tender did her Typing game on the computer after lunch and then they all went outside to play....I mean work with Daddy. ; ) That's all! Next week will be another easy week and then we will start working really hard on staying on our schedule! Robert has put in a drainage system for our yard. It was all pooling in our driveway causing the possibility of flooding our garage if too much rain came at once. So he dug out all the dirt and put down liner and little rocks. It's draining lovely now! Today he is working on the children's play area. Adding some swings, a rope ladder and putting down more lining and pebbles there too. So exciting! Meet Esau. Him and Jacob look very alike but Esau has a longer face and a tiny bit more white around his eyes. Jacob's face is smaller and cuter. A couple weeks ago the dog and the kitties were due for their flea treatment so I hurried up and did it before bed. I was halving the kitten's dosage because they aren't full grown. So I put some on Jacob and then when I figured half was left I put the rest on Esau, only to discover that Esau probably got more like 75%. Oh well.
The next day after our play date I was talking to Daddy and Hurricane came to tell me that Esau was shaking and his ears were laying down. I said okay and finished my conversation thinking that she was worried about nothing. When I went to check on him I saw that she was not worried over nothing. Esau was twitching and shaking so much he was practically vibrating! He couldn't even walk and was crying in a most pitiful way. I picked him up and held him cuddled up to me tight and that seemed to calm him somewhat. We couldn't find Jacob so I just cuddle Esau and started reading on line about what over dosage of flea medicine would look like. I found several stories of people mixing up dog and cat flea medicine but just knew that I couldn't've done anything that silly. So I kept reading. Finally I thought I should at least double check myself. So I went and looked closer at the flea medicine. My heart dropped when I saw that I had in fact been that stupid. I had put Advantax for an 80 lb dog on our little baby kitties! And really put most on poor Esau! I ran back to the stories on line of testimonies about this very thing and found awful outcomes mainly on grown cats. So Robert started calling around to local vets asking questions after we washed both of the kitties in Dawn. Jacob had been hiding under the couch but wasn't really twitching yet. We found a vet that we could run to and I set off with both in a pet carrier. I prayed the whole way for a vet that would be gracious to me. I was already feeling like the worst pet owner and mom in the world! I was a total emotional wreck. Praise the Lord for delivering because the vet that was working was overly kind and gentle. She was very honest as well, though. She said the best help we could give them would be to send them to Kansas State in Manhattan for their ICU. Around the clock IV fluids might help flush the poison out quicker. We couldn't afford that so she said the next best thing would be to hook them up to an IV there during the day and I take them home at night to doctor them there. That too, was pretty steep for two kittens. So she called in an order for liquid muscle relaxer for the kittens and gave them the first dose intravenously there before I took them home. I was to keep a close eye on them, keep them in a dark and quiet place. Check on them often and give them the medicine every 8 hours. The muscle relaxer was to help with the twitching so that they were able to eat and drink. By the time we got to the vet Jacob had started twitching too. Neither of them were when we left because the medicine helped quickly. The doctor said that usually cats pull through this poison but since they were so tiny and Esau got so much she was very fearful they wouldn't make it. She said if they did live it would probably take 3-7 days for the poison to fully get through their system. She estimated on the longer side, again because of their size and how high the dosage was that they got. I got them home and settled and fed them tuna which they didn't eat well. Five hours later Esau was twitching awful again! We bathed them again (as we were told to do) and I went ahead and gave another dose three hours too early. Esau couldn't lay down or walk or anything, he just stood wide stanced twitching viciously! After the kids went to bed (and Tender had prayed over Esau several times) I just brought him out to the living room and held him securely to make him more comfortable. For two hours I held him while the medicine didn't work and he twitched and jerked in my arms. When Robert went to bed I moved to the couch and held Esau like a baby thinking any minute he might die in my arms. I fell asleep. About an hour later I woke and Esau wasn't twitching anymore. He was sleeping calmly. I heard his brother crying for him from the laundry room and decided to try to move Esau back in there. I laid him down in there and left them both acting normal. I set my phone alarm for two hours because I needed to keep an eye on them. Every two hours throughout the night I ran downstairs to check on them so that I would know if they needed more medicine. And every time they were acting normal. The next morning you would not have guessed they had ever been sick! They were eating and playing and pushing their little paws out the bottom of the door wanting to get out of that little room! I was shocked! I waited half the day before letting them out and when I did they ran wild having fun! I believe the Lord blessed us with a little miracle. I was so relieved that I didn't kill my children's baby kitties! And Esau and I tight after that episode! He loves cuddling with me, where as Jacob runs right past me! |
LindseyI'm the mama and wife. Updating you on our life! Archives
January 2022
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