Goodbye Crooked Finger...

A week ago today Paige had surgery to remove a bony tumor in her finger (technical name: osteochondroma). The surgery went well. She went to sleep happy (she told me this) and woke up happy (I was witness to this). It was a little nerve racking for her parents because the surgery was supposed to take 30 minutes and ended up taking 1 hour and 45 minutes because she's a tiny kid with a tiny crooked finger :) Jason and I know that God is in control and we know that anesthesia is generally safe (this is our fifth experience with a kid being put under). But its still a little tense while you are waiting to hear that everything went ok!

The biggest deal was going to be keeping Paige from removing her bandage. Harhar. Well, we didn't have to worry about that for too long because Paige removed it that very afternoon! I made a frantic call to the surgeon while Paige's incision dripped blood and she remarked at how it didn't hurt (poor kid--the nerve block was still in effect. The pain would come later.). Doctor's orders were to re-bandage it and use the fingers on either side of the affected finger as splints. Oh and to try to keep her from whacking her hand for the next couple of weeks. Hmmm. Real fun considering this is how Paige spends her days:



So we've been trying to stick to quiet games, like dress up.


And playing with rusty clippers.



Oh, this is the finger the evening after surgery. Yuck! It looked much more bruised the following day but I didn't manage to snap a picture.

Storm in the Night

Last we did "Storm in the Night" by Mary Stolz. Nice story and appropriate for our week because we actually had a few storms (and one was at night too!). We did a little lesson on weather, mainly focusing on thunderstorms. We read the thunderstorm book by Magic School Bus and that was a hit. We touched a bit on the five senses--the girls' favorite activity was when we all piled into my closet and turned off the lights and noticed how much better we hear and smell without our sense of sight.

We also talked about fear and our verse for the week was Isaiah 43:5 "Do not be afraid, for I am with you;". Once again, GREAT story for this past week as on a occasion we deal with a little thunderstorm anxiety around here!

A nice side note: the heavy rains we were blessed with gave us the largest amount of rainfall our area has received since July of 2007! Amazing! This drought has been so bad--our lawn was really suffering (not that this is the most important thing but its where the effects of the drought were most felt by our family). Now its all green and overgrown--gorgeous! A lawn in central Texas is really something worth preserving--locals know what I mean! Huge mushrooms sprouted up all over the yard. I have never seen fungi like this in Texas!

Photo session

So we decided to do a little photo shoot in our backyard since we have precious few pictures of all four girls together. Oh man. It was like...well...exactly like trying to get four little kids to all look at the camera at the same time (everyone's eyes open and no goofy faces or panties showing). I think we took over fifty photos. These are some of the best:






Looks like I'm about to flip Jason the bird.

Oh I almost forgot...

Last Friday we went to homeschool day at Pioneer Farms--a local historical site where you can see how the pioneers lived in Texas before the time of air conditioning, running water, electricity, etc. I can say with absolute certainty that I would have turned my wagon back east after spending a summer in Texas under those primitive conditions. I didn't get a lot of pictures because my camera battery died and then I used my iphone and only got a few pictures with that. It was really fun though--the girls loved and we can't wait to go back. Oh--we had rented "Old Yellar" the weekend before and so the girls recognized several things from the movie. They were wondering where the rabid animals were though.

Little girl dressed up in authentic "pioneer garb". The girls thought she lived here :)


Paige next to the "potty". Right after I told the girls this was the outhouse Paige decided to start stripping to try it out!



Big evil longhorn cow. This thing acted nice--was letting the kids pet it and then it started trying to gore people.


Hailey trying out the stilts.





Penny, good little baby that she is, slept a good deal of the tour.

Our first two weeks of school.

I'm so happy to say that our school year got off to a pretty good start! The first book of the year was "How to Make an Apple Pie and see the World" by Marjorie Priceman. What a fun book! We got to "visit" many countries so the first thing we did was to make passports. We got to borrow Jason's and the girls enjoyed examining it.

We ended the week by making an apple pie (of course). The two big girls helped measure the ingredients and assemble the pie. I don't really do a lot of baking and had never made an apple pie before either (if we are going to eat dessert then the girls and I prefer chocolate and Jason is not a huge fan of pies). It turned out to be so good I think we'll make one from time to time!




























The second week we did "Clown of God" by Tomie dePaola. Good story but kind of heavy--it dealt with a lot of social issues (orphans, mean people, homelessness, etc). We spent time talking about why some people feel like they have to be mean and how much it hurts others when they aren't treated with respect. We also made a list of things we are thankful for. We learned how to say "thank you" and "good bye" in Italian. And we watched a few videos of jugglers on youtube (we found a video of a teenager who could juggle knives while riding on a unicycle!!). The girls tried to juggle--each tried it exactly once before they decided that juggling was a lot more difficult than it looked :)

Our routine seems to be working pretty well. I decided that doing school five days a week is a little much at this time--especially for the new kindergartner. She loves her special portion of school ( phonics) but I noticed she was getting a little burnt out when we did three days in a row. In the future I plan on doing different lessons (besides Sing, Spell, Read, and Write and possibly Five in a Row) on Wednesdays and possibly Fridays. Hopefully this will keep things from getting monotonous. That is the last thing I want--for anyone to dread school. We've got several projects that I'd like to do this fall--raising butterflies/moths for example.

Oh this week we are OFF. Monday was lost to a holiday and Wednesday Paige had an afternoon of pre op stuff for her finger surgery next week. This morning we had to be down at Childrens Hospital for for Reese's check up with her gastro doctor. Plus the baby has had a bit of a cold and has been a bit cranky and needing more Mom time :) But next week we'll be ready to get back into the swing of things!