lea1
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Posts posted by lea1
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I read this to my husband doctor (family physician). He said he had two patients in the hospital recently who had symptoms, went to a cardiologist who did the basic screening test, screening test came back negative and they were told they were fine and sent home. They both ended up in the hospital with symptoms again at a later date, which is when my husband saw them. He had a cardio doc see each of them, an angiogram was done on each of them and confirmed heart issues with both.
It sounds like this is somewhat common, although I would bet most people don't know that. My husband said "Just because the test came back negative, doesn't mean the person does not have heart issues. The angiogram is the gold standard".
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My understanding is that getting it in tiled squares is much cheaper than getting it in a slab. I have seen it done where it looks very beautiful in tiled squares too. Not sure if that is an option for you but thought I would let you know, just in case.
I would definitely let them know you are looking for a "great deal" and you are willing to be creative. On one HGTV show I saw, they got a great deal on marble counter tops for a kitchen redo. The marble had fallen off a truck and some of it had been damaged. The parts they used looked perfect and nobody would ever know.
You never know until you ask and they would like to sell even the smallest bits, even for cheaper prices, than to get nothing.
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We are in the process of designing our home now. I have read all of the posts in this thread and there are many things on here that I would have loved to include, most especially a library with all of the fixin's:). Alas, with our budget, I don't get everything I want.:glare:
We started out designing a one story home but, as it grew, it turned into a two story, as putting it all on one story would have been much more expensive.
We hired a design company to help design/organize the kitchen, which was money well spent. We will have a very large island with a nice size work space, a sink and seating for four, since we have that now and we love it. We will have a microwave/convection oven above our other oven, so it looks kind of like double ovens but the top one can also be used as a microwave. We will not have a formal dining room but we made the breakfast area much larger so it can accommodate a larger table and hutch. The kitchen, the eat-in area of the kitchen and the great room are all open to each other.
The family room is off the other side of the kitchen and has a long wall of bookcases, which I think will be very convenient for homeschooling and and we are planning to use some durable, easily cleanable flooring in that space, there is a nice size screened in back porch off the great room, a nice size front porch also and lots of beautiful windows to look out on all the trees in the back and the pond across the street in the front. The staircase has two access points, one at the mud room area, where we would come in from the garage and another from the family room. Both access points will take us to the same landing and on up the stairs. We put the master suite and guest suite downstairs, along with the laundry room and the husband's office. Bedrooms and a Jack & Jill bath are the only things upstairs. There is also a powder room near the living areas, kitchen, laundry room and mud room.
Our goal was to build a very energy efficient house so we are planning to build with Structured Integrated Panels (SIPs), which makes for a very draft proof house. It is so air tight that you need to install a system to bring air into the house in a controlled manner. It reduces the size of the HVAC units required and also insulates the attic space and garage so well that we will be able to use that space for storage without worrying about things getting too hot or cold. We are also planning to do a solar hot water heating system, with which we will also have hot water on demand.
That being said, our great room and our family room will both have cathedral ceilings. With SIPs, you can do this in an energy efficient way. I think the tall walls in rooms with cathedral ceilings can be difficult to decorate. So we have designed it such that, in the great room, there are windows and french doors to the screen-in porch on one end and the other end will have an opening where we can look down into the great room from the upstairs hallway. In the family room, one end has windows and the other will have a rail along the stairs going upstairs. Underneath this staircase landing is a storm shelter, so we won't have to worry about tornadoes in the future, which will be a relief. (Can't have a basement here unless you live on a hill.)
We will have a three car garage and we made sure to include the right kind of outlets in the garage, in case everyone is driving electric cars in the future. Also, the garage has nice windows so it won't be so dark like our current garage is and it is large enough to have a work area for dh. We are also putting in some type of efficient fireplace, possibly direct vent. We want something that we can heat with in the event of a power outage.
We will have as many built-in shelves and cabinets as possible, given the budget. In our current house, we have a large formal dining room. When we moved in, we hired a carpenter to build bookshelves around the entire room and some lower cabinets on two shorter walls. It has worked out beautifully for us, as we are not formal diners but we have plenty of books, games and toys that need storage space.
If there was no budget and I could really build my dream house, I would do solar power for the entire house and have a back up generator installed too. I would have also made the laundry room big enough to hold the extra freezer (it will be in the garage) and we would have an excercise room upstairs. We will have tons of storage space though and we plan to rough out the excercise area in the attic space so we can use it even if it is not finished completely.
There are so many other things I could include but it's getting too long so I will stop.:001_smile: This is the first house I have helped to design and it is definitely not as easy as I would have thought and it takes longer than I would have thought, although we do not have a builder (general contractor)...well, we do but it's me.:tongue_smilie: So I have a lot of leg work to do to get pricing on everything...but we get most things at builder's cost, which is great!:D
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My guys were only 14 and 15.5 months old when they came home from Russia so I have not had to deal with this. But based on all of the reading I did before our adoption (for a year!), I definitely agree with what the others have said about putting it on the back burner for now. She has scars from what she went through that need to heal and she needs to be able to trust her new environment and her new family and feel it is a safe place. This takes a while for an older child. She is having to deal with so many changes right now that adding this thing that she is so scared of is probably too much.
Congratulations on the new addition to your family. I will definitely be checking out your blog.:001_smile:
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we pay a 17 year old $8 for two 4 year olds. She might be due for a raise because that is what we have been paying her for 1.5 or 2 years now. In the beginnning she could not drive. Her mom would bring her to our house and we would take her home. Pretty much the only thing she has to do is play with the boys and feed them dinner. She just feeds them a pot pie, from the freezer to the microwave, very easy. We have always arranged to have her arrive around 3:00 and we are back around 7:00, so she does not have to put the boys to bed.
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My husband and I have only been married 5 years (as of February). We adopted our two sons and they have been home almost three years (as of January). I feel as if we are still trying to figure out what our traditions will be. This will only be the third Christmas with our sons and they don't really remember the first two that well. Benjamin just turned 4 years old at the end of September and Nicholas will turn 4 Nov 11 so they were too young to remember much the first two years.
One of our family traditions with my extended family is that the kids who are old enough to read always take turns reading the Bible scriptures of the birth of the baby Jesus. They keep track of whose turn it is and they always look forward to it. It is always exciting when another child is old enough to read the Christmas story from the Bible. It is a very special tradition in our family. We do it just before we open gifts, as a reminder of what we are celebrating.
I need to think more about the traditions my husband and I will have with our two sons. There have been some wonderful ones on this thread.
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This is interesting because I had wondered if we were being excessive, although we budget for it and save before the even happens.
In our family, we normally decide before Christmas whether we are going to draw names (for the adults). We always buy for all the kids, which isn't really too many normally. We seem to have had them spread out in our family, enough so that we are not having to buy for too many each year. It is always fun to get to buy for the littles anyway. I always enjoy that.
We don't ensure that we spend exactly $50 for birthdays and $100 for Christmas, however those are normally the numbers I am targeting. It may be less this year because I have not seen a lot of educational or pretend toys that are age appropriate this year. It is difficult because their birthdays come fairly close to Christmas (end of Sept and Nov), so it is sometimes challenging to find good educational toys that will fit them for the entire year. I usually end up getting things for Christmas that I know they will be more likely to play with when they are a bit older, like 6 months later.
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I just saw the other thread about what people are planning to buy for their kids for Christmas. It made it wonder how much people typically spend on each of their kids for birthdays and Christmas gifts.
We have two sons who are just turning 4 years old. We spend $50 each on them for their birthdays and $100 each for Christmas, although some gifts are shared between them.
I have read of other families who get each child one reasonably priced wished for gift and then maybe a book and piece of clothing and some fruit, or something like that.
How does it work at your house?
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We have not had it although Oklahoma in general is being hit badly right now. My husband is a doc here (family medicine) and he says that this is mostly the swine flu. He showed me a graph of the normal flu and it usually peaks around January, give or take a little. The graph showed the peak of this flu as being as high as the normal January-ish peak.
So far, we have been fortunate, but we recently decided to keep our two sons (3/4 years old) home from church for the next two weeks and to be very careful about washing hands and all that.
From the sounds of it, it is very likely that you have the swine flu. My husband tested himself because he has had a cold and just wanted to make sure, and he said that the test does sometimes return a negative when the person does have it, so it is not %100 even if you were tested.
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I don't know if anyone is watching this thread anymore but I just ran across it tonight so I thought I would add myself to this list.
I have two sons who are just turning 4 years old so we are still in the preliminary stages of homeschooling. We are really just doing fun stuff and playing as we learn about counting and reading. Lots of playing, play dough, cutting, coloring and that sort of fun stuff. Everything we do right now is informal, although I toy with the idea of adding a bit more formal structure at times.
We are in south Tulsa, although we have purchased a lot in Owasso. We have our home up for sale (by owner) and are hoping it sells soon. We are working with an architect to design our new home but we will not start building until we sell our current home.
I would love to meet some local mom's from this forum. I agree with a previous poster that it is starting to get lonely, now that everyone's littles are attending preschool. My email address is lea@pisarik.com, if anyone wants to contact me. Thanks!
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We are in the process of designing a new home. We are putting in a playroom / schoolroom just off the kitchen and dining area. We won't have a formal dining room because we are not formal people, so we have planned a larger eat-in area off the kitchen plus a large kitchen island with seating for at least four. The kitchen and eat-in dining will be very open to the great room on one side but will have a wall and glass french doors to the play/school room on the other side. I hope/think having it so close to the kitchen and dining area will help us to enjoy using it more.
So I have been thinking about what I would want the play/school room to look like. Our kids are both just turning 4 now so we are just starting out. In the beginning, we will have more play than school but I want to plan it to also work for later years.
Current thoughts are to have a sink area for cleaning up after art or science projects without having to drag stuff through to the kitchen, in addition to very durable, easy to clean flooring, space for black/white/cork board, lots of built-in bookcases, a nice size table and comfortable seating and lots of windows.
We have been using our kitchen table to date but are now at a point where I would really like to be able to leave out crayons, markers, pencils and books and stuff for the kids to be able to do whenever they want without having to ask and wait for me to set everything up for them (have to cover the table with a plastic tablecloth). I too am getting tired (already!) of clearing off the table, only to have to get everything back out after a meal. So I am thinking we will likely use the planned separate room a lot, hopefully.
I anticipate that we will still do school stuff in the other rooms at times but hopeful that this room will be so convenient and well planned that it will be a joy to do work there and will be easy for me to keep an eye on from the kitchen when preparing meals and snacks.
Anxious to see what others have to say, as I was just getting ready to do a search on this type of thing to see what those experienced homeschoolers think about these ideas.:lurk5:
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Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback. It does sound like a great program. I think I will try out the free one first. I have looked at the samples and I am thinking I will work with my kids to draw/color their own pictures on each card we make and see if we can make that work for us.
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Thanks so much. This really looks like a great system. I think we will give this a try first before purchasing something:001_smile:.
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I would like to start a good habit or regular scripture memory with my two sons (and me!). I have a terrible time memorizing things and, after looking this over, I am thinking it might be very helpful. It might also help our family to keep scripture memory high on our priority list.
Has anyone used this or heard much about it?
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This is how our day goes. The kids eat breakfast around 7:30ish, snack at 10:00ish, lunch at noon, snack again sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 and then dinner at around 6:00ish. Our two sons are almost 4 and I keep wondering if/when they will give up the snacks but I still eat snacks too so maybe it is never.:001_smile:
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I have a friend who lives there and we have visited a couple of times. They have this terrific free park there that is more like a farm type place with tons for kids to do.
From what I have seen, it is a very pretty place to live. Lots of trees, very green and lush.
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We have two cats and I have found our litter box puts out a lot of litter dust that would be very unsanitary if it was located in a kitchen. Maybe you have a different kind of litter that is not so dusty. Our box is in the laundry room and I am always having to clean the dust off of anything that stays in there for very long. We have one of the large boxes that comes with a lid that is has an opening on one end and I keep the opening pointed towards the back wall of the laundry room, as far away from the door that leads to our kitchen as possible.
I have a niece who dedicated a hall closet to the litter box. They even put in a kitty door so they could keep the closet door closed.
I have yet to find a perfect place to put a cat box. Good luck!
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I have two sons who are almost 4yo. One will turn 4 at the end of this month and the other will be 4 November 11. So far, everything they have learned has been purely through playing and having fun, as opposed to actually having formal sit-down time.
There are times when I will ask them if they want to "do school" or they will ask to "do school". They sit at the table and color, cut, paste, do mazes or whatever. We have Kumon books and other great learning books and we have been doing this when we feel like it for over a year.
I have already purchased the first Right Start Math set and I also have OTGTR. We have not used Right Start yet at all. I look at OTGTR every now and then to see where we are and what they should learn next. They know all of their letters and letter sounds (short vowel sounds but not long). My older son can sound out three letter words and we have played around with the first set of Bob Books. My younger son is a bit behind my older son but not by much, although he tends to be less enthused at trying to read the Bob Books or trying to sound out words. They can both count to 29 without help and we are working on numbers beyond that. They can count out items also. They know the basic shapes and colors and 'light' and 'dark' colors.
We play around with sorting and making patterns and playing with tangrams and such, although it is not formal seat work.
If they were going to public school, they would not start Pre-K4 until next year and, since they just miss the cut off date, they would be of the older ones in the class.
Last year and this year I intended to start them doing some formal seat work, maybe three days a week, just to get them used to the idea of "school". Then I ended up thinking, "They are just 3 years old. Why start so soon? They are probably already ahead of many children their age.", etc. I keep putting it off and then feeling guilty about it and thinking I should be doing more (especially after reading other homeschooler blogs and seeing all that they do with their 3 year olds!).
So, what advice would you experienced homeschool moms give? Should I be doing more with them this year? Should we be doing some formal seat work each day or a couple of days a week?
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Hi, I'm Lea (46) in Oklahoma, married to my dear husband for four and a half years. I am relatively new at posting but have been reading for a year or two.
We have two sons, Benjamin and Nicholas, who will both be turning four years old in the fall (end of September and mid November, respectively).
So far we have had no official schedule. We just 'do school' when they are interested and mostly through play, although I am considering starting to do something a little more structured this year.
Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading
Bob books
Kumon books
Logic books (Critical Thinking Co.)
Lots of reading aloud, counting, sorting, matching, coloring, painting, cutting, pasting, etc.
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Quote:
Orginally Posted By ThatGirlOverThere
"But something needs to be done about health care access to all people- to me it is a basic human right to have health care." (bolding mine)
My husband is a family physician. He studied his tail off through college and medical school, instead of partying or goofing off. He worked tons of hours through residency, getting very little sleep. He is fortunate because his parents covered most of his college & medical school expenses but most docs get out owing a hundred thousand dollars or more.
He has to retake his boards for family medicine every 7 years. He just finished taking them after getting up early every day for two years so he would have time to study, using his own personal time. He also spends a lot of his own personal time to read various medical journals, so he is up to date on the latest and greatest. He uses his own personal time to go to evening lectures to learn more or stay up to date on the latest and greatest.
We have to carry lots of very expensive insurance, just in case someone falls on our property or we are in an auto accident and we get sued for everything we have, because they find out he is a doctor and they think we are rich (definitely NOT the case). He makes good money but it is not over the top, by any means. When we met and I was still working, I made more money than he makes now (and I only went to 4 years of college). We are frugal people. We save our money and pay cash for everything. We have saved an "emergency" fund, in case he loses his job, so we will not have to rely on the government. While our friends send their kids to private schools and go on fancy vacations, we homeschool and stay home, for the most part. Our kids are not taking these lessons and those lessons. They do not go to Gymboree or Tikwando (?sp). We buy their clothes at resale shops or at WalMart, Target or Kohls type places. We hardly ever buy clothes for ourselves and, when we do, we are very careful about how much we spend. We do not buy DVD's and we do not (and will not) buy any sort of video games.
I believe that our "basic human right" is to BE FREE. That is what our constitution says, it is a God-given right. Our constitution does not say that you have a right to health care. On the contrary, what you call your "basic human right" to health care is my husband's life and career, that he worked for and EARNED. According to our constitution, he has a basic human right to be FREE and to take what he EARNED and get what he can for it in a FREE market, just like everyone else who has a job in the U.S. does.
How about if we take all of the teachers and welders and truck drivers, and grocery store owners/workers and carpenters, etc., and say that the government should take them over and control how much they can make and who they will service, because it is everyone's basic human right to have a house and a car and an education and food. And the government could control cost and put a cap on all of these people's pay also, so no one is charged too much for these essential things that are everyone's basic human rights.
Does this make sense? Is this the United States of America, home of the free, that we know, for which our ancestors fought and shed their blood? No! I think not!
There are those who want to shove this bill through, as they did the other bills they recently shoved through without even reading, to move this country as quickly as possible toward socialism while they have the opportunity....and they certainly know this financial crisis is an opportunity, since Rahm Emmanuael (?spelling) said this to reporters himself!.
If our elected leaders really had our best interests in mind, they would slow down and consider what measures they could take to improve the current system and fix it where it is broken, while allowing us our basic freedoms. We do not have to throw the baby out with the bath water in order to fix this. Tort reform would be a good first step and our President and the Dems are not even willing to consider it (Texas did this and it has made a huge impact). When a person with a pre-existing condition joins a large company, they are not denied health care coverage because they are part of a bigger group that helps to offset the cost. So change the model. Move health care coverage away from businesses and create a new model where insurance companies would have to group people in a new way where costs were offset and no one can be denied. Make better use of health savings accounts and then force providers to post their fees so consumers can comparison shop. There are many many steps they could take to move us in the right direction (I have heard many great ideas in the news lately, many of which have been posted on this forum).
Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are bankrupt. They are in serious trouble. Our government (both Republicans and Dems) has failed us. Why would we now turn around and trust them with a 1.5 trillion dollar health care system?? It makes no sense.
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I'm curious, for the Canadians who posted they are very happy with their health care, could you give us an idea of what percentage of your salary goes to taxes?
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No, not at all. Here is a great site. This guy knows his stuff and tells it like it is. Beware of some bad language here and there sometimes though.
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Congratulations! One mom of a homeschool-mom-blog that I read recently had a baby and she has 5 at home and homeschools. One tip she gave that I thought was a great idea was that she kept a list of things to do on the fridge and a couple of times a day she would have each child do two of the things on the list.
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Well, isn't that cool! I thought that is probably how it worked but was not positive. Thanks!
I've lost the joy of my twins.
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
I have two four-year-old sons who are six weeks apart in age (adopted from Russia at 14 and 15.5 months of age). I thought three would be the hardest age. I had not read much of anything about what to expect from four year olds. My expectation was that four would be easier. Boy have I been surprised.
So far, for me, this age seems to have been the hardest. The level of activity has ramped up, as has the level of competition and bickering.
I am getting ready to turn 47 also, so the hormones that go along with that has not helped either. Taking breaks is definitely a requirement. I normally take a break in the evenings while the husband is spending time with the boys and then I also take an extended break on Saturday mornings, which really helps a lot. I am always happy to see them when I return.
My mood and my attitude definitely sets the tone in our house. If I am in a snapping mood, they snap and bicker with each other much more. I have seen them start out a day snapping at each other and bickering but if I remain kind, patient and sweet and discipline/guide/direct with that attitude, their attitudes normally adjust according.y pretty quickly. It amazes me how this works and I get so aggravated with myself if something puts me in a bad mood and I can't seem to snap out of it. I definitely need to pray about it more.:001_smile:
I tend to be a bit more of an introvert, which means I really need some down time by myself to re-energize. When I don't have it or the general stress level is high, it is much more challenging for me to remain patient, kind and sweet.
I'm hoping five will be easier.:tongue_smilie: