SHEs Organized

First melt down.

The mantle. This house never had a fireplace but for Christmas Eve one year, my dad and dh installed a lovely mantle for me in the family room so we could hang the stockings next to the gas 'wood stove.' I just realized it would stay with the house and burst into tears.

Ds is downstairs taking pictures of the 'measuring' door. He was here from age 18 months so it shows his growth through his life (although he hasn't been measured against it since he and dfs were done before they left for college.)

I so 'hear' you, Kathryn.

We parked at the Inn and walked a few hundred feet to the church. Had a slide show going after church of the taking apart of the sanctuary & the construction so far. Amazing! They've accomplished a lot just since Thursday. Already have the 40-year old carpeting out and a new subfloor laid (they needed a level surface for their inside scaffolding to go on anyway.) When they're through new carpeting will go in. They even reconstructed the pulpit stage. Something that probably needed doing a long time ago but much easier now.

Lock smith is across the way now. Somehow our dneighbor's Motorhome got locked and no one seems to have the keys. ???? Even had the sheriff here. Locksmith has been at work for well over an hour trying to get in. My theory is that the medical examiner may have inadvertently locked the door when they left Thursday. No one seems to have been here to lock it up after that. Family needs to get in to go through papers, clothing, etc, etc, etc. And it's HOT out there. Camp owner and manager both have been down here. Dh told the brother this morning he'd like to make sure the water heater is off so he can turn the water off outside to make sure there's no damage from either of those.

Dee's post has reminded me that as difficult at this process is, at least we are doing it with all inhabitants of the house still living.

Someone at church this morning asked me why I'd move. I told them it was time for a new adventure in life.

Taking a breather. The cars are loaded up except for the fridge/freezer food. We are taking the table and chairs today because ds seems to think he's cooking dinner for us tonight. He's totally exhausted and is exhausting me just looking at him but he can't have a few hours sleep or else he'll not be able to wake up. I'm sending him home in 45 minutes to start cooking and we'll follow as soon as we can after that. We are waiting for the guy to pick up the tower.

What an interesting theme today! LOve seeing what bags you use and why.

I have a wristlet that weighs 2.1 lbs (loaded). For the past year I have been actively looking to purchase another one just like it. It is PERFECT in every way and I would pay dearly if I can just find another one like it. One side is a zipper compartment containing the family money (we do the monthly Dave Ramsey cash way of paying for things). The other side of the wristlet is another zippered compartment containing my money and cards. It has a side zipper for coins. The part that I can't find is the 2 zippered compartments with a strap physically sewn into the wristlet. Most of them are attached with a clip. I don't trust the strength of the clip. I want the strap firmly attached.

When the wristlet isn't enough I use a SwissGear backpack. that weighs 14.4lbs (loaded) The backpack allows me to easily carry 2 bottles of water, 17" laptop and the dozen of keys needed for MPB. For several years I carried an extra set of clothing for LO in the backpack. Also a gallon size baggie containing various things to keep LO busy (little toys, drawing supplies, etc). This loaded backpack goes with me to LO karate classes so I can use laptop while he takes his lesson. I also take it when we go for more than a couple hours from home because it is the easiest way to carry multiple bottles of water.

Sometimes I'm almost embarrassed to carry a backpack. No one my age carries one. But I've learned to live with my embarrassment because IT WORKS! i've tried carrying a "normal" shoulder bag but things get all jumbled together and the weight of it hurts which requires me to switch it from one shoulder to another. The backpack is easy to balance the weight and doesn't hurt my shoulders. It holds an unbelievable amount of stuff in its many organized compartments.

Church today was amazing. Our pastor gave his best ever sermon. OH MY. If I told you what he preached about it would sounds weird. But somehow he took the weird example and pulled it all together. Several times during his sermon, I found myself holding my breathe and looking around to see if anyone was offended. Nope. Everyone seemed to love it.

I've posted pictures, announcements and my sermon notes to the church FB group. I sometime procrastinate in getting that done, so I'm glad to have it done in a timely manner.

You're so right, Kathryn -can see even more issues and things we need to make sure are in place for the dks someday. The locksmith actually just finally left after drilling and replacing the entire apparatus with a new one. They had a set of keys from the car that they thought looked correct but couldn't make them work and evidently he was having trouble with the lock before. His dd just got here from NC so naturally wanted to get inside. But they really can't take or move anything out (other than obviously the fridge) until it goes through the executor/estate. That could be a while. Obviously the MH will need to be winterized by someone before camp closes up if it's still here and I sure won't be surprised. He had already turned in his paperwork and paid his deposit for next year. Dh did ask them to be sure the water heater was off so he could turn off the water with no ill effects. Sure they'll get the computer turned off too -dh said there were 2 tvs, the radio and computer were on when he went in there Thursday to check on a pulse. The brother had called him there and he was the one to call 911 actually -though he knew the outcome at that point. But the ambulance, sheriff, etc had to be called regardless. Once the rescue trucks were on scene they were able to cancel the ambulance.

Had our first service in the 'borrowed' church today. How nice it was! One of our members is doing a blog and pictures each week of all the progress. It was really nice to see pics of the emptying of the sanctuary and then the beginning of progress inside. They took up the carpet and laid new subflooring so they can erect scaffolding inside. Amazingly the floor was off by as much as 2-3" in places. Definitely need a new one.

Time to really start going through drawer by drawer, shelf by shelf, and cabinet by cabinet & start packing stuff up. Trying to get the beverages all together in our inside fridge. I had gone across and offered bottles of water to the family, came back to discover I only had 1 bottle outside, but found a few more in our fridge in here to fill out the 5 I needed. So I made sure there's plenty more in there now.

Interesting topic for today! My favorite one at the moment is cloth, about 6h x 11w x 4d, just barely big enough to hold one of those generic organizers. The closest I can tell about weight is 4 lb. with my kindle. The main inside space closes with a zipper, it has a pocket on the outside of that, a flap closure that closes all the way over with two more zippered pockets. Most of the time these are all empty and there's plenty of extra space left inside. I have a smaller pocket size, maybe 4 x 6, purse with long enough strap to wear cross body when we go to theme park, etc., so my hands are free. I take only a bit of cash, my id/dlic and one card, lipstick and kleenex there.

I didn't post again last night as the storm lasted a long time and it was still raining when I went to bed. We still have standing water in the back yard....and there's more rain coming this evening and tonight so they say!

Dfam#2 should be here shortly. Everything is ready, dinner prepped and coffee cake made for dessert, to go along with pork chops, creamed corn, green beans and potatoes.

Just relaxing and reading till they get here.

I'm racking my little brain trying to think of someway to get LO to understand addition. For some reason even the simplest addition problem has him stumped and he has to stop and think about it.....usually using his fingers and frequently coming up with the wrong answer. I'm afraid he is going to fall behind in grasping this. He has to get this because it the foundation of future math problems.

This weekend I took a stack of 3x5 cards and put together all the ways to add numbers together to get the same answer up through 10. He should know this, but he doesn't. We are now working on one set of numbers at a time. Today's homemade flash cards are .....How many ways can you get 3?
2 + 1 =
1 + 2 =
3 + 0 =
0 + 3 =

the things that bumfuzzles me is that we just had the 5 week parent teacher conference last Thursday and his teacher said LO is doing great. His lowest grade was in Math but it was a 90.....so not terrible. He had a 100 in spelling and 98 in reading. The rest of the subjects will just be Success or Unsatisfactory (no actual grade). How can LO be doing great if he doesn't know the addition facts? He has to manually count each answer on his fingers. I wish I had realized before the parent/teacher conference that LO doesn't know his math facts. I have been so focused on other things that this totally got passed me. I now feel like he is behind and we are going to need to double time it to get him caught up.

I had H go to the combine demo derby with out me so could have some down time. I cleaned up the kit. "Found the counters " cleaned the chickens run and got the rest of the front cleaned up &did some watering. Figured out the c2c crochet project! Yea!

Doing better today I am so on a roll glad I counted the chickens they are all here a hawk was here yesterday and was having a hard time finding two of the black chicks last night. Hens were playing musical chicken taking turns getting out so dgd could put them back in it was like a game for all of them! LOL!

I use back packs love the ones with wheels especially for days I have more to bring like yarn projects or camping.

I need to round up the laundry. Watching halmark ch. A show a out time travel. Love the show some of you were talking a out with time travel in it love that show
The name escapes me now. I think it is Irish Outlander

LM....

Just use penneys and group them the way the problem goes.

Write the problem down... 2+2=4 (or just place the flash card in front of him)

say... 2 pennies + 2 pennies equals 4 pennies. scoop the pennies back into the pile and say.......... Show me.

Then let LO do it.... he needs to SAY
2 pennies + 2 pennies = 4 pennies

If he gets it right go on to the next factor:
1+3=4

Repeat the process.

Remember to include the 0+4=4
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Don't try to do too many facts at one time until he can master each one.

Or you can do this....

Using his facts cards have LO place the number of pennies under each number and then shift them to match the final number.

Make sure LO SAYS or SPEAKS the problem as he goes...

If the facts card says 1 + 3 = ?
it will look like this 0 + 000 = ( 0000 )
and he should SAY 1 penny plus 3 pennies equal 4 pennies.
(Don't just let him group them without speaking the problem to you.)

The 0's represent pennies.
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You can add to the game by telling LO he can keep the pennies each time YOU say SHOW ME ....and he does it right.

After he collects enough pennies you can also SUBTACT pennies from his Keeper pile if he gets the problem wrong....though knowing LO, my guess is that won't happen
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You can use this grouping process with pennies for all operations of math facts. If you see he's getting frustrated, ask LO what he is "thinking" as he does his pennies, and listen to what he tells you. That way you can understand HIS processing skills and why he is making his mistakes and correct them.
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In my professional opinion, having a child physically manipulate the math problem works better than using a computer game. Why...because all kids learn differently and when LO physically uses his finger/hand to move the pennies he is thinking/touching and feeling the process. Plus in my experience kids who do poorly with math facts don't UNDERSTAND the CONCEPT, or what is trying to be taught. The AHHHH or light bulb moment usually happens when the understanding of the concept clicks in their brains. Just because a kid knows his facts doesn't mean he understands the concept...it just means he's good at memorizing. And there is a definate difference between the two.

Muscles have memory...the touch of LO's finger sends a signal, by nerve sensors, up his fingers, up his arm muscles to his brain. When the brain "see's the answer it sends it to LO mouth and he "speaks" it. That's why I believe all kids need to "see it" "say it" and "write it" to remember with concrete thinking.

Also, because LO has a hearing problem you need to mention all of this to his speech teacher. Some times kids with hearing/speech problems also have a difficult time with math facts.

Hope this helps