Fairytale Landing

The promised picture

I have posted a link on the side in the photo albums of Mandy's baby calf.  For whatever reason, it seems that the image insert link is not working and I have no clue how to fix it.  So, any photos will have to be viewed on the side bar.  Just click on the photo or link and it will let you in the album.

Hope your summer is going well.  Ours is very busy.  We spent the day at the lake yesterday, and had a blast with the girls.  Mandy even mastered waterskiing and knee boarding!  She's our daredevil!  I don't have pictures of that because I was holding the rope!  Maybe next time.

Our new baby

Mandy's heifer had her calf today!!!  The girls called me at work all excited about the new addition.  She had a little heifer calf that is absolutely adorable.  Now the job of naming the cutie is before us.  Any ideas?  The cow's name is Pleiades, and we need to stick with something that starts with a "P".

I was going to post pictures, but for whatever reason my computer isn't allowing me to do that.  If I get it figured out I'll do so.

Math for weirdos

Okay, here's the scoop with the new math.  They have this conceived notion that if they teach different concepts for a short while and then repeat it every so many weeks.  So, they teach geometry for a few days, then move to fractions, then move to multiplication, ect...  It's not such a bad concept in itself, bu then they throw in different ways to learn division/multiplication/addition/subtraction.  They think that if they get the kids to do everything in 10/100/1000 ect that it's easier.  The truth of the matter is that it is more confusing to both the kids and parents to do it this way.  They call it Everyday Math I think.  An example is that to divide a problem like:

27 into 2078  they say to figure how many times 27 goes into 2000, and then honestly I'm lost after that!  But somehow they add zeros to it and then the remainder has to be fractions.  They can not be decimals at all!  Maybe for you homeschooling moms it makes sense, but for this working mom it is mass confusion!  My husband is good at math, and it has him stumped most of the time.

To me, it seems that the concept of getting addition down pat, then moving to subtraction, ect... makes it easier to grasp the next level.  When you are jumping all over the place you tend to forget it by the time you return.  OFF my soap box now :).

BTW, in case anyone was curious:  I start my new job in the clinic part in 2 weeks!!!!  I am very excited to be able to put more of my skills to work than poking needles through patients skin!  Okay, so I do a little more than that~but not much!  This last little bit of time seems to just drag by slowly.  Feb 26th is the big day of change!!!

Old Fashioned

Hey y'all.  We're still here!  Just very busy.  I thought some of you "old timers" would enjoy Mandy's synopsis of her math.  You see, they have this new fangled way of teaching math as a whole now-a-days.  Nothing is normal, it's all wierd.  Tonight as we were trying to get her to understand how to do long division, she informed us that we do it the "old fashioned" way.  Now come on, we are only in our early 30's here!!!

Jelly fish pictures

View A from the jelly fish adventure.

This is the side that the head was attatched too.

View B:

This is the side the tentacles wrapped around!  They are very long, sticky, blue yucky things that are hard to get to let go.  These pictures were taken not quite 24 hours later.  The red swollen look was gone by then.

There's a Shamu in my ear!

Eryn had her appointment with the ENT doc this morning.  She is scheduled to have tubes inserted into her ears next Wednesday the 24th in Barron.  When asked if it was okay with her to look for kitties in her ears, she told the doc~

"No, there's a Shamu in there."

What would we do without this child?!

Eryn and her best friends

I had to capture this moment with Eryn and two of her best friends.  She was just sitting so sweetly watching Curious George, and the kitties were sound asleep in her lap.  Not often that they can relax that much with her:-).

Sorry we have been so neglegent posting on here, but we've been busy cleaning the house, packing, and normal working and school on top of that!  A couple of things have happened though~

I start my new job in the clinic on February 26th!!!!  I am so excited for the change.  I will miss working directly with a few of the lab people, but I am excited to get closer to what I wanted to go to school to do:).  That is a good thing!  It will also be more steady hours for me which I am very anxious for.

The other good news is that it sounds like Keagan will be able to come home sooner than expected.  The little goober LOVES his food evidently, and is growing very steadily.  He's getting very close to 5 pounds, and is out of the isolet.  Mom told me that they have completely unwired him too!  I can't wait for Autumn and PJ to not have to make that trip!  That will be a huge help to them.

Well, I have to go to work now.  I just thought we'd let you all know that we haven't dropped off the edge of the world~yet!  I probably will not have time to put anything else on here until we get back from Florida!  We are leaving Saturday, and VERY excited!!!!

Pumpkin Hunt

Today we had the annual King's Kids Pumpkin Hunt for our church kids.  We have a small group of kids, but they had a ton of fun.  We had a short devotional by the fire, roasted hot dogs, hunted down goulish pumpkins, and then enjoyed toasted marshmallows.  The kids look forward to this every year and really have a lot of fun.  Here are some pictures from the afternoon.

Here some of them are roasting their hot dogs.

Heading out to find the pumpkins!  This is one of my favorite shots, but I was bummed that I was too far away.  I'll have to play with the editing and see if I can get it a litter closer without losing the quality.  My cousins boy was holding Eryn's hand helping her find a pumpkin.  Oh, how sweet!!

The fruits of their labors!  They were all excited over their finds.

Quiropracor

In case you are wondering what on earth that title means, let me explain.  Eryn got an earache Saturday afternnon through today still.  Yesterday she looked at me and said, "I need to go to the quiropracor."  Evidently she remembers past sucess at the chiropractor's office with her ears!

Let me also just use this post to say how great our God is.  As most of you are aware of, I started my job 3 weeks ago.  It has been a huge blessing as I get to work 3 days a week, stay home with Eryn the other days, AND I qualify for health insurance benefits along with others too.  God's timing has been wonderful, although I wasn't ready to say that a couple of weeks ago.  The kids were on BadgerCare and were kicked off effective October 1st, and my insurance doesn't kick in until November 1st.  We had just made mention that hopefully the kids wouldn't break their neck or anything serious until Nov. 1.  The NEXT day, Courtney was up all night crying about her arm hurting.  We took her in to the chiropractor because that's cheaper than the doc's office, and he could find nothing wrong.  The blessing was that he didn't charge me for that visit.  We ended up in the ER the next day because the pain had gravitated across her back and into her neck.  After a couple of discussions with the nurses, we concluded that she had symptoms of Lyme's Disease.  I took her in and requested only a Lyme's test be run.  Well, they told me it was a virus, ran a Lymes and C reactive protein (very expensive), and sent us home.  $700 later~Courtney seems fine(although it took a week to get to that point) and all tests were neg.

So, you may ask why I consider this a blessing?  Well, I have learned to put a little more faith and trust in God that he will take care of us.  It's also good to remember that the docs don't always have the answers.  It puts us on our knees!

Enough rambling for now!  Have a super Monday!

Catching Up

We've been so busy around here, that I have been neglegient in keeping up with the blogging.  We had two birthdays here in the past couple of weeks.  Courtney and Jody are the latest birthday girls.

Here's the rowdy group of girls that was over for a tea party.  Let me just say that I am so glad we are a Christian household that teaches our children right from wrong!  Not that they always protray that knowledge, but what a difference it makes in attitude!  Most of these girls are just as sweet as could be, but then, well you get the picture!!

Toady Lou has her "friend" party tomorrow night after school.  Because of my work schedule last week, and a bit of forgettfulness, we are doing it a couple days late!  We did have a pizza party though Friday for her birthday.  She got two of her biggest wishes for her birthday~ a Cabbage Patch Doll and a Build a Bear from Creation Station.  My mom has taken all five now to get their animal there, and they have loved it!

Yesterday we went to the pumpkin patch in the afternoon.  I was cheap, so they didn't get to do the maze or the petting zoo, but come on~$10 to do it all!  That's steep for all of us, especially when we have a corn field behind the house to get lost in, Grandpa has a tractor and wagon, and we pet goats at the county fair for 5 days straight!  We did however, find pumpkins, watch the pumpkin catapult and cannon, and enjoyed carmel apples!  BTW, those are the best carmel apples I have EVER had!  Daddy had to work yesterday which was a bummer, but we brought home an apple for him too.  The girls had fun with it even though Mom was a bummer!

Well, that's what we've been up to lately.  Have a fabulous Monday! HA HA!