ACT Playground

A new playground is being planned for in our town, a playground accessible to all children including those with physical handicaps. Land has been donated, but of course the equipment is slated to cost about $250,000. Fundraising events are underway and that's why I'm here today. A 15 month calendar is available for purchase. Savannah Smiles Photography has donated their services and took gorgeous photos of area children with disabilities. Local businesses sponsored the calendar making printing possible. Our own precious Little J is the October child and boy is he cute. If you could just see all the photos, each one cuter than the next.

15 month calendar - $15.00
If you'd like one please email me or leave a comment and I will make sure you get one.

ACT Playground - check out the website to get a view of the proposed playground

Week Before Christmas School

When last minute Christmas preparations sneak up it's time to relax the math, spelling and language and go heavy on art (sewing, cutting, gluing, framing, glitter, wrapping), physical education (sledding, ice hockey) and of course daily living skills (dusting, scrubbing, tidying, slicing, chopping, mixing, baking). We haven't forgotten about reading though. I bought lots of new Advent/Christmas books this year. We're also listening to A Season of Gifts.

And when Amber and Sam are feeling the need for a little phonics practice, Starfall always delivers. They love it and so do I. Amber was trying to spell Claus as in Santa yesterday and when I prompted her with au sounds like? She said oh I learned that on Starfall and immediately spelled it correctly.

Movie Review

Amber: White Christmas is better than High School Musical.

Since watching White Christmas every little patch of ice is a tap dance floor and every open floor space is for dancing with lots of spinning.

Thursday Game Day

At the beginning of this school year we added to our schedule Game Day. Every Thursday we set aside as the day to play games in the morning before seat work. I had envisioned games like Scrabble, Yahtze, Chutes 'n Ladders, card games of all sort, multiplication BINGO, Guess Who...games that had the potential to practice skills learned during regular seat work. I envisioned wrong. Most Thursdays when it was warm we played Inny-I-Over and now that it's been cold they want to play Hide-n-Seek in the house. Today I heard the cutest thing as I was hiding behind a bunch of coats and snowpants hanging on a hook.

Nicholas - This game would be a lot more fun if all the good hiding places didn't cause suffocation.

Science? Health? Vocabulary? What subject would this fit into?

OHS Anniversary

Foremost on my mind today is December 10, 2008. The day Little J had his open heart surgery. I remember so many things about that day, most of them not relating directly to the heart surgery. I remember eating an early breakfast at some restaurant, maybe Baker's Square. I didn't want to go, but Warren made me. He said it was going to be a long day and we'd best get some food in us for sustenance. I remember fretting over feeding Little J a bottle of Pedialyte. He couldn't nurse at all after 6am and I wondered if he would except the bottle. I wondered how I was going to pump under the weight of the day and how it all would work out. He took the bottle like a champ and the pumping, honestly I don't even remember how it worked out, but it must have. I remember the anesthesiologist giving us the run down on what would happen and when to expect Brandi, the nurse, to make her first appearance in the waiting room for a update. I remember the anesthesiologist saying ok, I'll take him. And I said, just like this, as he reached his arms out for him. And then he carried him off into what seemed like a black hole. We were then escorted through a door into the surgical waiting room where a variety of faces stared at my tear streaked face. A chipper middle aged woman assured us that this was the place for us and that we could expect regular updates from our surgeon's nurse, Brandi. She showed us to the drink station and then took her place behind the curved desk again. I remember fidgeting around looking at the pages in the book I brought along. I remember lots of updates from Brandi, he's been prepped, the incision was made, he's on bypass, the first repair is finished, the second repair is finished, he's off bypass - his heart is beating on its own, drainage tubes are in and he's been stitched up, he's in recovery. I remember the much needed distraction my uncle brought when he stopped by the waiting room. And then the next 24 hours of memory are blurry at best except for eating a bag of Salsitos and half of a brown apple from the almost closed hospital deli. He stayed in the hospital for a week, then 8 weeks of scooping and now here we are today. If not for the scar on his chest one would never even know everything he went through.

I praise God everyday for the doctors' knowledge and the wonderful nurses at Children's Hospital of Milwaukee.