The semester is fixing to start back up with Robert while the kids only got about 5 days off. So unfair! But we are thankful that we had Daddy home so much this season. He took a J Term and had school work with that but because of his back he couldn't sit at the library to work on it, he had to lay flat on the bed while doing the reading assignments. He is much better now and headed back to the seminary to work on his assignments, which will likely help his focus. : ) I am coordinating the local spelling bee for homeschoolers in the Louisville area. And that is happening next Saturday. So I have been pretty busy getting ready for that. But next week will be quite busy. Hurricane is competing in it as well. So you could pray that everything goes smoothly, that she does well, and that it is a blessing to all the students that are involved. Other than those things, we have been pretty chill around here. Having some big struggles with behavior from little boys and that is a challenge to my endurance but having Robert close has helped me to not give up. I fight daily to remember God's promises in the face of unbelief. To remember that no matter how hard things are with parenting that nothing can separate me from my Savior and if that is true then why despair at all? "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else (insert: children's behavior, losing my temper, children's poor opinion of my decisions, my poor opinion of me, etc) in ALL creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39 If what is most important to me is being with my Savior, then I'm set! So why do I keep putting my hope in other things? My weaknesses are very frustrating but they only glorify the Lord more because He loves me right where I'm at but loves me too much to allow me to stay in that wretched state. He has promised to make me better and I strive forward with that promise in mind. Well, we are going to do our formal learning early today so that we can relax the rest of the day and make a special dinner (sliders!). I pray all of you are resting in the FINISHED work of Jesus and seeking Him more earnestly today than yesterday.
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Picture of all the kiddos before we went out to run errands for the first time without daddy!! Eek! It was a success with only one gallon of milk being dropped and busted on the floor at the grocery store, Wild Man disappearing at the library bc he needed to find a hiding place to poop, and changing a poopy diaper for Silas and Wild Man in the bathroom only to leave a blanket in the changing station. But we made it back home before lunch which kept us from yucky fast food! Yeay! Silas snuggled in his wrap the whole time only waking when I had to put him back in the carseat or when he nursed in the carrier at the library. This week Daddy brought home about 15 pounds of wild apricots from the farm he works at. They are about the size of quarters and very sweet! The kids loved eating them fresh but they were all gonna go bad before we could finish them all so we made Apricot Crisp Bars, apricot fruit spread, and the girls halved and pitted 4 pounds of apricots to dehydrate. They are quite a bit more tart after you cook them but that doesn't stop the kids! They loved them!
We were invited to three different parties for the 4th but we ended up going to our church's get together. It was at our Sunday School teacher's house. He's a horticulturist and grows lots of yummy things! He had his blueberry patch ready for anyone to pick as much as they wanted! The bushes are 20 years old! And we had watermelon (currently my favorite craving) and shot fireworks and the kids ran and ran and played and played. We headed home and our neighbors invited us over to shoot fire works with them so we went over there and ended up getting to bed by 11:30! Quite a rare experience for our children! This week is my 33 week prenatal and then in two more weeks will be our Home Visit! Which means that I will officially be far enough along that I'm cleared to have a home birth and the midwife will come over and learn the ropes of our home so that she can clean up after the birth and do laundry and get around in our kitchen and such. It's an exciting prenatal appt because we have to officially have all of our all of our supplies ready. In other words Robert and I have 2 1/2 weeks to organize all of our birth supplies and put the cradle together and then we will just be waiting for God's timing and this baby's unknown birthday! It's been very busy for Robert in the last few weeks. He is rarely getting home before 7:00 and sometimes not until 9:00. But that should pass soon as they finish harvesting. Me and the kids are enjoying the summer. We've been swimming and we go to the library. I go to the chiropractor every other week and I'm seeing a counselor at a local church once a week (as long as I can get a babysitter). Tender won an I Spy contest at the library a couple weeks ago! We are slowly trying to get the freezers stocked for the post-partum period so that I have much less to do for preparing meals. This week we did breakfast burritos and two meals of Red Beans and Rice. Next week I am hoping to get some pizza crust made and maybe some homemade cinnamon rolls! : ) So Monday night I went hunting with Robert! We sat in the tree stand for a few hours and I read a book and Robert watched for deer. The next morning he wanted to go back out and invited me but I wanted to sleep in! Before the sun even came up he had two deer he had gotten with his bow! Above is where Robert and I packaged the ground venison! Our freezer runeth over. : ) If anyone is looking to sale a second hand freezer let us know! Sunday morning I woke up and was struggling and knew I needed to start the morning in the Word before the kids got up to distract me. I always know that is when I need to read but rarely do! I did Sunday morning only to be disrupted a few minutes later by The Boy waking up and coming to cuddle with me. He watched me read silently for a few minutes and then said he was going to get his bible and read with me. So I ended up side by side with The Boy reading the Word! It was so sweet I had to get a picture! Fun Tender story! We wrote a big family tree of Jacob's (or at that time, Israel) kids, grandkids, and great grandkids at the time of moving to Goshen! We are almost done with Genesis and so excited! Anyway, Tender was reading to me (to the best of her ability cuz there are some crazy names!) chapter 46 where it shares all the names while I wrote them down. Later we color coded the different generations! When we got to the list of Benjamin's sons' names there were two named Huppin and Muppin. So we stopped to giggle a little at those names and Tender sang off the top of her head, "Do you know the Muppin man, the muppin man, the muppin man? Do you know the Muppin man, who lives in Israel?" Oh we laughed! I like this family tree because it is literally the first Israelites! They started with these 66! The Boy has a busted up eye! He asked to play a game on Robert's phone and Robert tossed it to him and it accidentally hit him in the eye! Ouch! So then The Boy was saying that his daddy threw a phone and hit him in the face! Which sounded awful. So I kept explaining to him that it was an accident and that he needed to remember to explain that, as well. So when we were getting ready for his speech therapy I asked him what he would tell his speech therapist when she asked what happened he said, "I'll tell her it was an accident." Which of course sounds even worse! Like we trained him to say that! Which we did. Oh well! The kids are making a movie and The Boy will be a cowboy in it. So Hurricane made this horse for him to ride! I thought it was pretty impressive! Also, speaking of impressive, she has already finished her first grade math book. So now I gotta order her harder math curriculum! She's so excited!
Tomorrow we are having a "sort of" science fair with a couple other homeschool families and both girls are so excited! 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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