We are finally starting to get into the groove of things. Homeschooling is going so much better now that we are in a routine. I wasn't sure at first but we are all really starting to enjoy our homeschool group, Classical Conversations. Every week each kid has to get up in front of their little class and do a speech or presentation of some kind. Public speaking is a huge fear of mine and literally something that I have had nightmares about. I can only see one person in our family being comfortable as a public speaker and that is Hope, so I am glad the rest of us are being forced to step out of our little comfort zones and learning to public-speak.

Today they were supposed to show how to do something, using visual aides. Simeon showed how to solve the Rubiks cube, which is always sure to impress any audience.

Jude wanted to show how to play the piano, but we decided that a piano was too big of a visual aide to carry with us. Instead he made Chex party mix and shared the recipe and a sampler bag with all his classmates.

Liesel taught how to write a computer program! Of course her dad taught her how to do this while they spent two weeks together in Ukraine. Here we've been trying to help her find her niche and we have been looking in all the wrong places! She was 'too embarrassed' to do ballet, too nice for sports. She loves music but doesn't like to show off. But her face lights up when she works on a computer! She was beaming and said, "Mom I think I'm going to grow up to be a nerd!" ha.

Anyway I'm not sure what to think about the fact that my kids now know more than I do about computers, music and sports, among other things.

Jude and Liesel are best buds. They want to start a band, for only our family to enjoy. Jude plays the piano and Liesel plays the guitar. They are so cute together, even playing duets and making up songs.

They are also planning to start an orphanage someday on 500 acres. They will have horses for the kids to ride, and music, and they will teach all the kids to decorate cakes. Jude will be the preacher and Liesel will be the teacher. :) I love to hear them talk about these kinds of things.

It was a beautiful weekend, so we went horseback riding. Zoya has been a few times,

But Joseph....experienced his first horseback ride.

I think he loved it.

And Ava did too, as always.

This morning as we were walking out the door Simeon asked me where Zoya was. I  said I didn't know.
He turned around and this is what I saw.

She started meowing.

I think I feel a  Halloween costume coming on......

My new normal

Joseph had two appointments last week with the cardiologist and the audiologist.

Here is a story about 30 minutes in the waiting room at the ENT (Eyes Nose Throat Dr.) office. Have I mentioned he is a busy boy? I had two people in the audiologist waiting room, and again another at the cardiologist, point this out to me. "My he's a busy boy, isn't he?" "He must keep you on your toes." "Is he always this hyper?" Yikes. Yes!

Note to self: Purchase a little point and shoot camera with flash to carry in my purse. Camera phones really stink!

Here is the little sunken waiting area in the waiting room of the ENT's office. It is full of toys. What do you see? A nice row of comfortable chairs where children can sit and watch cartoons on the screen in front of them. What does Joseph see? "Stairs" to climb over to get to styrofoam cup that the man in blue is drinking from.

What do you see? More comfortable chairs to sit on and read books, or perhaps a table for children to play at. 

Joseph sees beyond the toys and the chairs, and sees the black scrolly decorations on the wall, and challenges himself to remove one or two. He also looks at the side table and sees, not the children's books, but the brochures, which he dumps out and then tosses in the air. He thinks he's funny and laughs at himself.

What's this? A nice receptionist sitting at a desk? Nope! A counter full of business cards and brochures, and even some really neat pens are disguised as flowers in a vase which he finagled and later attempted to use to write on a man's arm.

Lucky for me and him both, he is still awfully cute, and the people in the waiting area seemed to think so too. By the way, if a random little boy in the waiting room of a doctor's office came and sat by you, gave you his sad puppy dog eyes, and indicated that he wanted a drink of your soda, would you oblige him?

Surprisingly, there are at least two people in Oklahoma who would.

We are so thankful his heart is healthy according to the echocardiogram! However, he failed his hearing test badly, so the next step is to meet with the ENT. He will likely need ear tubes.

A big deal.

Why in the world am I suddenly not able to put pictures on my blog? Anybody else having this problem?

Because a post about Joseph at the audiologist's office getting a hearing test wouldn't be complete without photos. Right?

Remember the Heroes Among Us article, in People magazine, featuring Andrea Roberts and Reece's Rainbow? Ava was mentioned. Click here to read it.

Well Andrea Roberts has been selected as one of the finalists to win People Magazine's Hero of the Year!  That is a big deal people!!!


Please take a minute to vote for her! She is truly an inspiration to our family and to many others. We would not have Ava, Joseph OR Zoya were it not for Andrea. Literally hundreds of children have been saved from a sentence of life in a mental institution because of the Andrea's dedication and hard work. And she does it all because of her son, Reece.


Please vote by clicking here. You can vote as many times as you want so VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!!!

Mini Laps

Mini Laps was a huge success! $280,000 was raised, I think (?). Thanks again to ALL of you who donated and supported Ava. She did great. Although at one point she decided she was done pulling her little pink wagon with a piggy inside, and her teacher Brooke had to carry it the rest of the way.

Not only did she walk all the way around the track, but she stopped to say hello to an admiring fan. :) Both are miracles in my book.

Way to go, Ava!

There were SO many cute and creative floats and costumes. I wasn't able to snap photos of all of them but here are a few:

When this little boy, who is visually impaired, walked around the track, they asked the crowd to withhold their cheers. He had to listen to his teacher's instructions to know which way to go. What an applause he received when he crossed the finish line though!

A live pony, wow!

It's a corn stalk!

This little boy just got prosthetic legs last week! He showed off his newly acquired walking skills. Sweet boy. He is in Ava's class.

A crop duster! How creative! Who in the world comes up with these kinds of ideas? This boy is non-verbal and has no use of his arms or his legs....BUT he can maneuver his wheelchair by himself, by turning his head. He can also communicate by directing his eyes towards words on a computer screen. Technology has been good to this boy and his family.

A silo. Oh my goodness.

Is she cute or what?

Fall has arrived.

Love the braids.

This little girl inspires me.

A cute little lamb. Oh me oh my....

Little John Deere raced across the finish line and clapped for himself. ha

Beautiful girl. She has come so far even from last year's Mini Laps.

This little boy is in Ava's class too, and quite a cutie! Love the gardening gloves hanging out of his pocket.

And here is Ava with her teacher Miss Brooke. We are sure going to miss this place next year. :(

Do normal families have shoes in their wreaths?

Or only those with sociopathic tendencies?

You know what is funny is that we have been looking for this shoe for days, and have been walking past this wreath in my entry for the same number of days, and none of us noticed the shoe. Then my sister came over last week and said, "Did you know there is a shoe in your wreath?"

Um, yeah. Doesn't it look pretty?

Thanks you guys for being so nice to me. Thanks for understanding our family and our "sick" sense of humor. By the way YES I do know that ponies is the plural of pony. I didn't mark it wrong on the paper because I asked him while I was grading how do you spell ponies and he spelled it properly.  Besides he had spelled it right in a previous question, so I knew he knew it, and I let it slide. I did point it out to him though. That's what we homeschool moms do sometimes because it's not fun to see too many red marks on your page. When you post your photos and stories on the internet sometimes you are taking a risk that everyone is really going to know whether your kids can spell (or you can spell for that matter), whether you grade properly, whether you keep your house clean, buckle your car seats properly,  or whether  your family has sociopathic tendencies......etc.


:) I guess I'm a risk taker that way.


Anyway....I've been working on this post for 3 days but have had so many interruptions. I guess that is what I signed up for when I decided to have seven kids.


I told you we had an appointment with the pediatric dentist/oral surgeon on Monday. It went a little different than I expected.


Zoya turned out to be quite the celebrity in the dental office. Apparently none of the staff, not even either of the dentists, had ever seen an unrepaired cleft palate on a child this old. Zoya ended up showing every tech, receptionist, hygienist, and dentist the roof of her mouth, and several photos and notes were taken. Who knew an open cleft was such a novelty? I didn't.


Everybody was fascinated.


The dentist was so happy. Zoya proved his theory about cleft repair and how if done later, it benefits the craniofacial development.


He feels that, from a craniofacial point of view anyway, it is better to leave the cleft open in childhood so that the jaw and the bones can develop properly. He said that when the cleft is repaired during infancy, which it is 99.99%  of the time, the upper jaw cannot grow and therefore the upper jaw stays smaller than the lower jaw. I couldn't picture this at all and they couldn't provide photos to 'prove' it. But everybody who saw it agreed that her teeth and jaws looked beautiful and "normal" for a child who had not had cleft surgery.


Now he told me to google pictures to see what he was talking about, and honestly I couldn't find any. So if anybody knows what he means and has pictures to prove it, I would love to see it for myself. He is recommending waiting a few more years to do the surgery. He feels that a prosthetic palate (I just made this name up, I really don't know what I'm talking about) would help her be able to learn to eat better and talk, and then once she is fully developed, say, as a teenager, we could have it repaired.


Now, this is just the dentist's opinion. We have not consulted with the speech therapist or the surgeon. Something tells me they would have a different opinion. From what I understand, she would benefit socially and speech wise by repairing it ASAP, but she would benefit appearance wise (normal facial bone development) by waiting. I guess we have to decide which we feel would be more important to her. Like I said I have never actually seen a person with a cleft palate repair to know any different.


I'm open to any thoughts or suggestions about this. Like I said, this was not what I was expecting to hear, especially after so many commenters suggested repairing the cleft ASAP.


Zoya is very proud of her beautiful smile and her cleft. She doesn't hesitate to show it to anybody. So, if you are interested, here are some photos of her beautiful smile.

I never noticed the scar on her chin until I looked closely at this photo. Or is that chocolate?

See how her upper and lower teeth align perfectly? According to the dentist if she had gotten the cleft repair early, the upper jaw would be much narrower and she would have a significant underbite.

How I love this girl. Isn't she beautiful?

What is appropriate?

It fascinates me that what is innocent and funny to one person, is completely inappropriate and sick to another. It was pointed out to me by a random blog commenter that a joke about a pony being used as target practice is not funny at all and in fact, is "sick". Let me copy the comment here:
Yeah, looks like you're raising a sociopath. A propensity toward animal cruelty is among the most common signs of antisocial personality disorder and other ailments. Yeah. Totally not funny. That's actually really sick.
-Ellen

Ellen, It so happens that my children have indeed used the pony as target practice. Yes, the pony has been shot at with orange foam cylinders from a Nerf gun. Somebody call animal protective services...quick! In fact every person in our family and even the dog has been struck with Nerf pellets, because that is one of the ways we like to have fun around here. What struck me as funny about the answer was that it was not meant to be funny at all, but an honest answer from a boy......a good hearted boy I might add, who happens to love his Nerf gun. AND his animals.

What is also funny to me is that the person who thought it inappropriate for me to joke about my boy's honest and, in my opinion, funny answer to a question about ponies, found it appropriate to call my child "a sociopath with a propensity toward animal cruelty".

Funny.

Anyway, please accept my sincerest apologies if I offended anyone by posting the pony story. I just thought you might like to have a glimpse into a day in the life of a homeschool mom of boys. Knowing my boys well, I personally thought it was cute. Please do not worry. Our animals are safe. Well except for the chickens that were eaten by the dog. Oh and the rabbit that was eaten by the dog as well. Wait, we did have to dispose of the rooster who was attacking our littlest children every time they went to the barn to collect the eggs. But otherwise everyone on the farm is alive and well. And happy.