Sorta forgot I had this blog!  So we are closing in on our house build and thought I would share a bit.  The land was actually found by a couple of cold calls.  Really.  It never hit the open market which is wonderful because it would have been snatched up before we knew it existed.  We are never moving again unless Scott is offered the sun, moon and stars with a giant paycheck on top because this is the land we have been trying to find for a decade.

Pictures do no justice,,,truly.  It is a wonderful, magical place that is perfect for raising children.  Small town, country lane with dead end, under 10 neighbors and 7.3 acres that belong to us.

Lots of porches, mud room and no "formal" anything.  Perfect.  Lots of wildlife (turkeys, deer, foxes, snakes, birds, frogs, etc, etc).  We are in love and hope that our children can raise their children here as well.  It truly is our "Mayberry" and we know we were led to find it.

Wow...

So I made it 5 months without posting. I don't know why I keep this thing up.
Kids are winding up school, we are still installing new flooring, got the fireplace tile done, having a yard sale this weekend..same stuff really.

I opened an Ebay store in January and made Bronze Powerseller in January and yesterday I became a Silver Powerseller! For those of you who don't know Bronze is the first powerseller level and Silver is the second. I love doing it because I still don't really "work" but it is a nice big boost to our income. It also gives me a great sense of satisfaction in knowing I can help financially without sacrificing time with the family. Everything is done while all the peeps are at school and work.

Well see you all (all 2 of you) in a few months!

Well that was fun!

So we pulled out all the Christmas stuff and started decorating the tree. We were going to get a real one as well as put up our fake one but we decided to used the money that we would have spent on a real tree to buy presents for some friends who are a bit of a bind right now.
So everyone except Noah is putting on the ornaments although Parker is more into directing than participating. Noah crawls around the back and the new dog follows...luckily the tree is pretty sturdy. When we were just about done we sent Reece to the basement to get some ice cream. He comes back and we learn that it had been left out and was completely melted. Well most people would pour it into the sink but Reece put it in the recycling bin as is (you see where this is going right?). Noah pulls it back out as his favorite food on the planet is ice cream. He makes it partially through the kitchen/family room door before he drops it. No problem for him, he just gets a spoon and starts scooping it up. Gross. When you are putting in new flooring and have the wood floors in but still have not started on the kitchen travertine guess what happens? It soaks into the subfloor between the old and new flooring. Not only that but melted ice cream sinks nicely into the grooves of really nice Brazilian hardwood. Toothpicks are helpful in case that ever happens to you.

That was the end of happy, fun, family time.

Most of the time I can laugh this stuff off and move on but this was not one of those times. It has been really rough this year with Noah and this was the proverbial straw for me. I never sit around and feel sorry for myself over Noah. I don't have time and it does no one any good plus I know it would be too easy to fall into a permanent funk and I have three other children that need me. I just lost it. It is so hard to parent a special needs child. Seeing blogs and pictures of other families who go camping, to Disney World, etc is very hard because we cannot do those things as a complete family. If we do something like that we have to find someone to watch Noah because he makes it impossible otherwise. Even something as simple as going to the local farms is a major ordeal. We no longer even go to church together. Scott and I takes turns staying at home with Noah and the other takes the 3 oldest. It is so unfair to the other kids. They get that we have to make allowances but when they must give up so much for one person in the family.....I worry that they will grow to resent it or him or even me because the frustration needs a target and there is not a clear one in this case.

After the ice cream hit the fan, er floor, Reece just said he was going to bed. It is not right that this will be his memory of decorating the tree. I have really struggled this year with my emotions over Noah's challenges. There is no clear path with his diagnosis. None of the specialists can tell us what to expect. It isn't that he is retarded or stupid. He knows his numbers, letters, shapes, etc but when we can't even have a two sentence conversation what do we do?

On the plus side Parker is doing great at homeschooling. He is "recovering" from the disaster that was second grade. We are very blessed to have a wonderful family from church who lives one street over and also is a homeschooling family. I have leaned on her quite a bit. I am even thinking of yanking the oldest two within the next year or so. I don't trust myself to do it right now so Parker gets to be the guinea pig for awhile. We have had a lot of fun so far and I am very happy with our decision.

No profile.....

I had to remove any trace of myself profile-wise because of another blog that is connected to me. No I am not doing anything illegal (that would be really blog-worthy!). It is waaaaaaay to long of a story and I am waaaaaay too tired to explain it right now.

Great Thanksgiving, exhausting Thanksgiving. They are not mutually exclusive. :)

Still a blogging failure....

I guess I should change my blog to "Farnsworth Quarterly Report".
In our last issue Parker was having a bad time in school. I am happy to report that is not longer the case because *drumroll* I have pulled him out and we are official homeschoolers!!!! It is the best decision I could have possibly made. He was withdrawing and regressing at a terrible rate. i felt that we were losing Parker to the Wii and Club Penguin. Those had become his escapes because he was so unhappy. I think the thing that finally clinched it is when my fabulous friend Nikki commented that on Friday's Parker was shut down towards everyone but come Saturday afternoon he was a happy little camper. I finally pulled the plug on what was a bad situation.
There were so many issues that I couldn't possibly name them all. I have come to the conclusion that most public school systems are ridiculous. How is it that 25-30 children can be put into a room and they are expected to be on the exact same learned level as everyone else in the class. That completely discourages anyone from being gifted because no one has the time for one-on-one instruction time. Gifted students are "dumbed down" to the level as the majority or their classmates. This was one of the main issues with Parker. We have caught him up on everything except social behavior. He is about 18 months behind and is the youngest kid in his grade. Unfortunately (for the schools) he is also one of the smartest and can do work several grade levels ahead. He was bored and hated doing work that he could do in his head. He didn't want to write it down because it was so easy for him. This situation had disaster written all over it. He wold be bored, act out and get a referral. In the past two years he never received a referral (at the last school) and I think that is partly because his teachers were male. Sorry but there needs to be more men in the public schools. In the two months that Parker was at Chancey he received no less than 12 referrals. How can he go from none in two years to more than one a week?
You cannot tell me that he changed that much over the summer. Basically Parker was not going to sit there and do work that was so far behind him it would be like asking a high school senior to sing the ABC's over and over.
I am very happy with the decision I made and am having a great time so far. Parker is doing great and his little spirit is healing quickly. As another wonderful friend said "You have to think of Parker as if he were in Triage for his damaged spirit". That is what we are doing. *Putting soapbox away*

As for the rest, Noah is doing wonderfully and has a couple of words now. We love, love, love his school, teachers and speech therapist but JCPS will not let him stay after this year (don't even get me started).

Connor is doing well but needs to become more organized. Reece is doing well but got a "D" due to not turning in something that had nothing to do with grades or work...it was something I was supposed to sign but Reece forgot to give it to me. I will not go off on my tangent about that grade but suffice to say that I am beyond angry that my son went from a "B" to a "D" and it had nothing to do with his work.

We are seriously looking into homeschooling them all (except Noah) within a couple of years. It is a difficult decision as I was going to return to school in the Spring to finish my degree. I am so close but I am sure the season will come when it is my turn. The kids cannot be put on hold but my education can.

We are getting rid of all the carpet! We have gorgeous hardwood in the entry, dining room, hall and family room now. We are not even close to being done. We will also do all the rooms upstairs, our rooms and then we are putting travertine in the kitchen, breakfast nook and all three bathrooms as well as the fireplace surround. This is a small part of the floor. We are ripping out that awful vinyl in the picture.
When the house goes up for sale in the next year or so we want everything to be ready and updated.

We hope to buy some land with a couple other people who are on the same timeline as our family. Luckily we all get along and so do our kids. Hopefully it will come to fruition.

Anyway I have to fall into bed so I can get ready for the 26 (!!!!) people who will be here on Thanksgiving. I love to have a full house on the holidays.

Blogging failure

I cannot believe that it has been so long since I wrote something.
The summer was fun but really chaotic. We had a great time in Mexico and basically want to build a hut on the beach to live in. At the end of the summer we took the oldest three kids to Great Wolf Lodge. It was really fun and no one had to wonder where Noah had wandered off to every 30 seconds.

School has begun and things are crazy as usual. Reece and Connor have great teachers and seem to be doing well. Parker has a wonderful teacher but is off to a very rocky start. Parker was in ECE (special education) for all of kindergarten and 2 months of 1st grade. He stayed at Zachary Taylor (not our home school) for the rest of first grade even after he went mainstream fulltime. He had an amazing teacher who was great with him. This is the first year that he has gone to school with his brothers, ridden the regular bus, not had a male teacher, and first time at his home school. Tons of changes.
It has been rough to put it mildly. He has not really felt completely at ease at Chancey. Even with his brothers there he is just not familiar with anyone or anything and it has really undone a lot of progress. He has had constant meltdowns/tantrums and already he has two referrals. He got a new doctor because the old one was awful (why would someone who obviously does not like kids become a child psychologist?) but the new one was even worse. He now has a new, NEW psychiatrist. He is actually my shrink. Yes people as startling as it may be.....I see a psychiatrist and he is the bomb. *Tangent* When I first went to him I noticed that he had a University of Oklahoma degree so I asked him about it...long story short...he grew up less than 1/2 mile from me and his mother still lived 1/2 mile from my parents AND he, my mother, myself and two aunts all graduated from the same high school. WIERD!!! He keeps trying to convince me to go to law school.
Sorry. So my psychiatrist thinks that he is very close to being ADHD but he doesn't quite fit the criteria. Wow how surprising since he doesn't fit any label most people have tried to slap on him. He is not autistic, ADD, Aspergers, but he might be a little ADHD. Why is it so important for adults to label kids? He has been evaluated more times than I can count and not once has he ever had a definitive label. It was always "maybe this but maybe not.
So we are trying to find a happy medium in a lot of different categories right now with Parker.

Noah is in a class of only four kids. We love his teachers and the school. They formed this class for non-verbal kids and they have some very cool technology and almost a 1/1 student teacher ratio. We are thrilled. Noah is doing better but not great. We no longer go to church as a family any longer because he became impossible to manage. After one really bad Sunday that ended with me sobbing in the RS room we decided that one of us will take the older three on a rotating basis. It sucks but it is either that or we just stop going altogether.

Now that Noah is in school I have about 7 hours with no kids. I thought I would have tons of time to get things done but the day is over so fast that I never get everything done. It is really nice to have some quiet though.

I am SO tired as it has been a very long and stressful day. I am going to time travel back to the 1950's and read Trixie Belden.

Good and the bad

Well school is coming to a close and I am happy yet also dreading it. Entertaining 4 kids daily will be exhausting but fun. I am also leaving for Mexico on June 7th and cannot wait. I desperately need to get away.

The dread of summer is due to Noah. It sounds awful but wait until you hear my reason. First, Noah loves to get out of the house and run off. Since he doesn't talk and doesn't understand danger this makes it way more stressful that it could be. We recently got him a Brickhouse Child Location device but we have to pin it on him and it cannot get wet. Second, he seems to know every single time I sit because that is when he comes to get me so he can drag me around until he finds whatever he wants and then I am supposed to get it for him. I cannot tell you how tired I am of that. It doesn't matter if he wants a drink or if he wants to turn the ceiling fan on/off/on/off/on/off/on/off, etc I am dragged to it by my finger. If I don't comply with his "request" he immediately begins to scream and throw a tantrum. You cannot reason with him. He can count, he knows his colors and shapes but you cannot explain why playing with the box fan for 6 hours is not your idea of a fun time.

Good News! We found a school that we think will be able to get Noah speaking. Bad News! It costs $12,000. I will be fighting the school system to get them to pay but no matter what he is going. We are not moving to Oldham County and I am ebaying my heart out to come up with the tuition. Someone offered me $30,000 to be a surrogate but I have to draw the line somewhere. Being pregnant for someone else is not worth $30k.

Sorry I digress (as usual). I feel really overwhelmed right now with Noah. Because of him our family options are growing smaller and smaller. We are so limited to what we can do because Noah can, will and has ruined activities for us all so sometimes (most of the time) it is easier to just not go anywhere. This has grown to include church. Scott and I now go on alternate Sundays because he refuses to go to class even if we go with him. Complete tantrum/meltdown. It is ridiculous. I feel like my family is being held captive daily.

This is why I will live in a shack to pay for this school. Reece has to kiss South Oldham (or East...we were not quite sure yet) goodbye for middle school because we cannot afford $1333 a month for this school and a new mortgage payment. That is actually more than my current mortgage. Yikes. If he starts talking it will be worth every single penny though.

If anyone has any great ideas on how to pay for this place I would love to know.