To Busy To Blog (because I'm reading)

A good friend of mine wrote a couple years ago on her blog that her reason for not blogging was because she was too busy living life.  At the time I didn't understand how that could be possible but I now understand.  I'm busy.  Super busy.  And something had to go.  So it was this blog.

Of course the fact my laptop broke factors into it.  I find that I like writing facing the world and not facing the wall.  Even now, ugh, I hate it.

But I wanted to write about reading.  Yes, reading.  If you know me at all you know I love reading.  I didn't always, but I became a reader in about seventh grade.  I read Johnny Tremain and I loved it.  Then I started my marathon of Nancy Drew books.  I read them and all the Hardy Boy books that year.  I spent hours reading.  I loved them and still think of them fondly.

I still need to read.  It never went away, even though I can tell my eye sight is not what it once was, I still read.

I have always assumed that because Matt and I both read it would be easy to have a bunch of readers in the family.  Well I assumed wrong.

Elijah WAS actually easy.  He picked up reading super fast.  I didn't really read to him as a toddler or preschooler much.  But when he started Kindergarten I did read to him.  A lot.  By first grade all I had to do was start reading a book for a few minutes and he would take over from there. I didn't finish any of them.  By second grade he was reading several grades above grade level.  I wish I could say I did something fabulous, but I didn't.  It was mainly him.

Now Ally has always been just fine with everything she did.  She learns at a steady pace.  She is bright and just gets things.  She is always above average and after explaining a few times she just gets it.  I didn't read much to her because I was distracted by Lauren.  (We will talk about Lauren in a second.)  And I regretted pretty quickly not reading to her.  She sailed through first grade.  She didn't pick up on reading like Elijah did, but she has always been right on target at least.

Enter the first Parent-Teacher Conference of second grade.  She was at a new school and so I didn't know the teacher much at all.  But the teacher informed me Ally was reading at a low first grade level.  I looked at her and said, "WHAT?!"  I didn't believe it.  They put her in an after school program to help her.  I started reading to her books out-loud.  At least 20 minutes a school day (I take the weekends off, so sue me.)  Plus what she has to read on her own.  We worked and worked.  And I discovered something about my girl.  I always suspected, but wasn't really worried about it, but she doesn't enjoy reading the way I do.  She whines about reading.  Much the same way I used.  I hated reading at her age and I was an early reader like Elijah. I learned that if Ally doesn't get enough sleep (she is my only morning bird) she is kind of mean.  And I learned that Ally loves writing.  She is a very, VERY good writer.

The after school program went on for about six weeks before I realized she hated it.  She told me they weren't helping her with reading, that they were helping her with math.  Math?  Wait, what?  As I had her read on her own, the books she chose on her own were much, much higher then the books she was being send home with from school.  I was perplexed.  I talked to the teacher of the after school program.  She said she sees no problem with Ally's reading.  She is the only child there reading chapter books and seems really bored with the program.  We agreed to take her out after discussing it with the teacher.  She didn't need it.

At the next parent-teacher conference her teacher exclaimed at the progress she had made.  She was right on track.  (As usual.) And she very quickly overcame her "summer reading loss".  I nodded a lot but thought in my head that she probably never really had a summer reading loss.  It could have been a bad day, it could have been the new school, but whatever happened, she is fine.

I am grateful I learned a few things about her.  She still doesn't love being read to, but she LOVES the time together and I love reading books to her.  My favorite was the book, "Frindle".  It actually made me cry!

On to Lauren.  With all of Lauren's language problems I have asked several times, What can I do to help her?  And the most repeated answer was, "Read, READ, READ!!!"  So since she was 3 1/2 I have read to her about 20 minutes a day.  With no breaks on the weekends.  It has made a huge difference.  She is in a small group Kindergarten, which was very disappointing to me.  But at HER first parent-teacher conference they told me she needed to be mainstreamed right away.  She seems to be stuck in a land of doing too well in some areas for Special Education and not well enough in some areas to be without it.  But they mainstreamed her and I continued to work with her with her learning as I have in years past.  I now not only read to her, but I made HER read to me for 20 minutes.  It was very painful at first, and at times she still has her moments, but she is reading at grade level now.  Let me tell you, I consider this a miracle.  She was not speaking two years ago.  Now she is reading.

At her last Parent-Teacher Conference they told me she now needs help with writing.  (Boy, does she ever!)  So now we are doing the reading, the sight words, her new mainstreamed classroom Kindergarten homework, and a writing journal.  She may just pass Kindergarten without her IEP!  We shall see.  In a few weeks I go to her IEP meeting and we will figure out what to do with the wonderful daughter of mine.

I'd like to say her success has been her.  And it has been, a little. But honestly, I know that it has been her teachers and me.  I once told someone that I liked doing two years of preschool because it is so hard, nearly impossible to catch up a child to what they could have been if they fall behind.  As a Kindegarten teacher I saw this too be true.  If a child comes in to Kindergarten only knowing shapes and colors, they have a whole years worth of learning to make.  They should understand the basics of phonetics before they get in.  Lauren was still behind what I hoped for despite all the work I had done as well as her teachers.

But honestly, this has taught me that a child CAN catch up.  It is possible.  I have been doing what I thought was impossible with Lauren.  I have done the IMPOSSIBLE.  (But honestly it has taken a LOT of work.)

I have learned my lessons with Eden.  I read to her.  And she is doing fine.  No learning or speech problems at this point.

But I want to total the time I spend with EACH child:
Elijah 2 hours (AT LEAST)
Ally  1 hour (At least)
Lauren (1 1/2 hours)
Eden (20 minutes)

That is about five hours a day I spend, every day with each child on homework and reading.  My house is mess, but it is okay.  I can not redo with time and it is worth it.  I probably shouldn't add up the time I spend on extra curricular activities with them.  That number gets MUCH higher! (Yes, we do that too!)

I know some people are going to think it's excessive.  It happens to be what each child needs right now.  It is hard, but it can be done!  (Although I admit sometimes I "cheat". I have a neighbor girl reading to Lauren about once a week for her Young Women service hours and sometimes Elijah reads to Eden and Matt and I tag team the reading some days, but he is not here every night and I'm not home every night either.  We definitely have to be on the same page!)

Every second I read with them and help them is worth it to me.  They are doing extremely well and they know I love them.

Hopefully soon we get a break!  We need a vacation!  lol

4th Grade Handcart Trek

One thing I love about Elijah's school is the wonderful extracurricular activities available.  Not that they participate in all of them, but still.  They are there.  Someday one of my children will ballroom dance.  Someday.

Anyway, I learned at the beginning of the year that the entire 4th grade goes on a handcart trek at the end of the school year.

This may sound crazy, but I've always wanted to do one.  I love camping and dressing up and so I saw a lot of potential for this to be totally awesome.

The only thing I knew about the trek before this was when my NOT MORMON Grandma, Aunt and mom and driven by this exact same enactment the year before.  My mother apparently gave the impression that it was completely normal and we do it on a weekly basis.  lol 

The first thing I worried about was costumes.  Because Elijah's teacher REALLY wanted them to dress up.  Unfortunately, Elijah has been in this "I hate to dress up" phase.  Unless he is a ninja.  Then he is fine with it. 

So I had to dress him in normal clothes that looked like pioneer clothes.  Since he and basically the whole family are "t-shirt and jeans" kind of people this was actually harder than you would think. I think we did fairly well.  All things considered.  One other thing I know for sure is that I wouldn't have anything pioneer-ish. At all. 

 So I was fairly sure I would have to sew one.  So I went to my friend Lacey who had such wonderful ideas and she helped me implement them.  Actually, she ended up making it due to time and talent constraints.  I loved her ideas, but I didn't know what the heck she was talking about.  lol  So here it is in all its pioneer glory.  It is adorable.

The day of the trek started fairly nice.  There was supposedly a 30% chance of rain.  Ha!  It should have been more like 100%.  

Elijah's teacher placed Elijah and consequently ME, with all the hardest boys in the class.  You know, Elijah's friends.  It was nice fore him. 

So here are the boys (which really were a great group and we had a lot of fun with them.  Starting in the front and working counter clockwise, Elijah, Mason, Alex, Nathan, Nichols and David.  You can also see David's dad and the Ma and Pa.  Who were Evie's parents.

 The girls in our group really had a good time together.  Left to right, you see, Evie, Izzy, Grace and Caryse.  They started the trek by singing.  Very loudly.  Much to the annoyance of the boys.  We almost had WWIII before we even got started.  Sheesh.

 My favorite part of it was having the whole school come out and wave us off.  for some reason it reminded me of Girls Camp when the 4th years would hike into camp.  Not that we would line up and greet them, but having the whole school wave them off was very nice.  You can see the lady in the black in white in the picture.  She is also in our cart and she is extremely helpful later on.

 Because they sent us off one at a time, about five minutes apart it took a Looooog time to get going.  We were the 9th out of 10 carts.  So they sat us down and we listened to pioneer stories.  As seen by their faces it was a little anticlimactic, but we survived.

 By the time we got to the front of the line the wind was REALLY picking up.  Alex and I think Nathan didn't have coats, which was actually something that nearly half the kids were missing.  So Alex, Elijah and Nathan huddled in a blanket while the air really started to cool down.

 We got to our first check off point fairly quickly and were told to we were to eat some jerky and share it with the cart in front of us who had "broken down".  Apparently the jerky also fixed the cart because they started right back up after we left.

So we moved up one cart in the line.

We kept moving and about five minutes later the rain came gushing down.  It was horrible.  While I love being in snow I REALLY HATE being in the rain.  But we kept the group moving and ended up passing two carts who had stopped to wait out the rain.  Not to long after that Evie started to cry and by the time we got to the neighborhood in the next picture she wasn't doing very well.

At the next stop about five things happened at once.

1.) The boys were asked to join the Mormon Battalion.  And they ALL did.  Even David's father. 

2.) Worried parents drove by with coats collected from various neighbors. You can see here, all the kids have coats now.  Elijah has a really thin and soaked windbreaker.  And his hat is ruined.

3.)  Upon seeing the parents in the car Evie had a complete breakdown and she AND her parents hopped in the car to wait out the storm.  I never did see those parents again...

4.) At the checkpoint the oldest member (of the children) had broken her leg and had to be pushed in the cart.

Okay that was only four things.  It felt like more at the time.  lol

(Boy's being impressed into the Mormon Battalion:)

 The other mom and I took inventory.  We had three girls left and us.  Up to this point we had been letting the kids do the pushing  and we realized that was going to have to change.  We also had to figure out who was the oldest child left in the group out of the three girls.  It ended up being Caryse (lucky Caryse).  So Izzy and Grace took the front and Grace's mom and I took the back.  So I couldn't take pictures anymore.

We ended up going through my parents neighborhood.  Which was kind of funny and REALLY tempting.  Because I was tired and freezing by this point.

We hit one more checkpoint and Caryse got out, but then Grace ended up with a gimpy foot.  So she had to limp and we still had to go down a steep hill with a glorified wagon and two adults and two and a half girls.

We made it down and ended up at Strong Hallow.  Which is another place in my ward growing up. 

I had made rootbeer, which ended up being REALLY inappropriate in the freezing cold rain.  The girls started making a lean-to shelter.

 After we had been there for not too long the Mormon Battalion came back.  We all ran to greet them and this was Elijah's story.  Basically they walked around.  They couldn't eat thier snacks.  They got yelled at a lot and someone took his blanket and gave it to someone else with no coat.  He said his coat was wet and it was as good as no coat. 

I told him it sounded like a realistic experience.  He didn't like that answer. 

 They then had to go around and do activities at the pioneer village.  Like making dolls, butter..

 Woodworking...

 Checking on their shelter, swinging on a rope swing, tying a quilt, shooting a bow and arrow, throwing an axe and things like that....

 We also got a warm chili dinner and a dutch over dessert...

 The na guy came and talked about really pioneer times. 

And we headed back to the school.

 While walking home Elijah and Alex were lagging behind and I told Alex his whole backside was dirty right before I was getting a picture.  And he posed.  I wasn't happy with him.  Here is the picture I didn't expect to get....

 Here are the other kids working hard while Elijah and Alex were back with me.

Despite the rain, I loved it.  And would totally do it again.  :)  Here's hoping I get the chance.

Long Time, No Post

There is nothing on my calendar.  I can't believe it.  I mean I have to do the Christmas stuff, but other then that, not much.  How strange.  I've been running from project to project since about July.

I'm tired.

I'm so tired I can barely think.  But my blog is abused.  So I will catch up as fast as possible.  This is made more difficult  because my computer broke.  And my Kindle and my Kindle Fire. And no I don't want to talk about.  It's been traumatic.

So typically after so long I start by going back and looking at pictures.  And I found this gem:










What is so special?  Well that is a lovely block tower my girlies made.  And it's so sweet they are getting along!  But what I noticed the most is that Ally's hair is realllly long, Lauren's hair is one BEAUTIFUL length and that their room looks nothing like this anymore.

A couple weeks later, aunt Heather came into town and cut all of Ally's her hair off.

I pretty much let Ally do what she wants with her hair.  I wish she would let me put it in fancy hair do's, but she honestly hates it.  She likes it just straight. And she wanted to have long hair, so I said sure.  Because she likes it just straight I asked a few times if I could pull portions of it back and she never wanted me too.  So I wanted her to cut her hair shorter because bob's look great if you do nothing to them, but I didn't want her to tell me she never gets to choose anything.  She has a hard time saying her opinion as it is, soooo I didn't really say what I wanted her hair to look like to her.  I just told her Aunt Heather was coming and she can trim her hair.

She surprised me last May by telling me she decided she LIKES her hair short and she wanted Heather to cut it off. Now, I have always liked my hair short.  I really hate it long.  HATE IT.  So since college it's always been short. (Except for my wedding.  It was kind of long then.) And to have my daughter tell me she likes her hair around her shoulders sounded so much like ME, that I had to laugh.  

So here is the before.  Isn't her hair pretty?

 Here is it all cut off.

 And a few weeks later we got the girls a bunk bed.  It's a twin over full.  Ally is on the top and has her own mini room set up there.  Right now Lauren has the bottom bunk to herself.  Lucky kid.  I have been known to hop in with her when Matt is sick and not sleeping well.  She wishes I would do that every night.

Speaking of haircuts, this is around the same time that Lauren cut her own hair.  She was so proud.  And I was so shocked.  As unattached as I apparently was to Ally's hair, turns out I'm pretty attached to Lauren's.  It was a sad day for me when Lauren cut herself bangs.  I am a hater of bangs.  That is the only hair thing I really care about.  And to have my long haired daughter cut off her beautiful golden locks for bangs??!!?  Yuck.  And they are curly hair bangs.  She looks like a permed 80's child.  Where's the Aquanet?

Buuut, she is still pretty and I manage to hide it well.  But, well, not in this picture.

ADHD

It never ceases to amaze me that casual acquaintances need to diagnose my son.  I haven't talked about it a lot, but it keeps happening to my son.  I have been told by near strangers that I should medicate him.  Usually their experience is their own child's ADHD or even their own ADHD. So they KNOW what ADHD is.  They see my son do similar things and they KNOW what is going on.

It kind of reminds me of a medical doctor.  When you go to the internet and type, say "headaches", you are going to get anything from brain cancer to tension as the diagnosis.  So people who have experience with tension headaches are going to think it is always tension headaches.  But if you go to a medical doctor he has the tools to tell you exactly what is going on.

It is the same thing with ADHD.  The exact same thing.  People see my son acting a certain way they advise me to get him help. 

Here's the thing. We have gotten him help.  We continue to help him He does have a diagnosis.  And it isn't ADHD.  And no I'm not putting the diagnosis on here.  If you don't know me well enough to ask me, then you don't need to know.

But it keeps happening.  That I should diagnose him as ADHD.  That we are delusional.  That we can't see what is right in front of us.  Let me tell you something.  I was a teacher, my husband is a counselor.  We know what we are dealing with.  We deal with it every day. We have read books, gone over the DSM-IV ourselves and even with professionals. We are not blind, we have worked hard. 

But if anyone who reads this thinks I am delusional or blind, let me tell you I am not.  We have had him evaluated, we have talked to professionals and medication isn't what is needed. 

All that happens when people tell me how to treat him or deal with him is that it reflects badly on that person and not him.  They are the ones that look ignorance. So seriously it has to stop.  It just upsets me. Can't people just treat him kindly, no matter what the problem is, no matter how frustrating?  Why is it so hard?  He is only 10. He is learning to be an adult.  Why can't the adults actually act like an adult, instead of expecting child to do it?

Here are some things I have learned:

-My son is gifted.
-It is possible to be gifted and have ADHD. 
-One resource I used was this checklist:  SENG checklist
-The medications people so blithely recommend have serious side effects and none of them are tested for children.  Or anyone under 18.  ADHD and Parkinson's

Ten, Ten, TEN, TEN, TEN!!!!!

So this year my son turned ten.  MY SON, TURNED TEN!!!

He will be going into the fifth grade next year.  

I'm old.  

 Sooo...his birthday was interesting.  Because I was trying really hard to be enthusiastic.

 Look how excited he is to get his telescope!  (I'm doing better in this picture...but not much.)

 What is in this gift?  Yes I realize again with the Christmas wrapping paper...  (It turns out...)

   (I am sick.  Really sick.  Sicker than I have been in years.  I even went to the doctor.  I had strep.)

 So he really wanted a birthday party.  Since I was so sick, I wasn't so excited.  But I let him do it after I got antibiotics.  He invited ten boys.

 And they all came because it was a video game party.

 And it was one of the best parties ever.

 They didn't fight.

 They got a long really well.

 They ranged the whole house!

 Some brought their own devises.  It was seriously the easiest party I've ever done.

 And here they are, the cutest Nerd Herd EVER!

 Silly Picture!  They were so fun.  :)

Pass of All Passes

In January we purchased the Pass of All Passes for a really good price.  And we were so sick and I was working so much we didn't use them.  So the weekend after I stopped working we went to Trafalga.  

The kids decided they wanted to try indoor miniature golf.  

It was a hot day and so being indoors was HORRIBLE.  IT was so hot!

 Eden was totally mystified by the dark room with the flashing black lights.

 But she recovered quickly.

 At first Elijah seemed to enjoy himself.

 We were taking turns...

But towards the end, they became hot and grumpy and so we ended up rushing through the game.  Just to get out of there.

We decided next time to go to the Lehi Trafalga.

Maybe that will help our attitudes....

Lauren's FIVE!

I'm thrilled to know that Alan is reading at least the first half of my post.  Sometimes you forget anyone is reading these anymore.

At least I do.

Lauren's birthday falls during Spring Break.  Which means a.) we have lots of time to celebrate it.  And b.) It's the equivalent of a summer birthday.  Friends are all busy.

Lauren got a nice cake from Costco.  Ally picked this one out.

 And she really liked the cake.  See how she is chewing it.  SEE???

 Lauren was excited to open her gifts.  She loves her "Happy Birthday."

 This years birthday dress.  Again, Costco.  Yay for Costco!

 Then she began opening gifts.

 Pay no attention to the Christmas wrapping paper.  I not a good wrapper.  I forget to buy paper.  Except for Christmas.  Because the stores are closed.  So I never have it.  I should get better about that....

 She also got a pink thing in a box....

 Here is a random picture of everyone who was helping her unwrap the gifts.  Hi mom!

 Lauren's high chair for her Bitty Baby Doll.

 And the changing table.  She LOVES it!

 She had so much fun opening gifts but her day wasn't over.  Later that evening we got a knock on our door.  And at the door were two completely unexpected visitors.

Uncle Gary and her cousin Alexis from Texas.  I think I may have screamed in shock.    They were in town for a wedding on his families side and we had no idea!

It was a great way to end the day and so fun to see them!