Deployment

Mario is putting in for a 6 month deployment to Ecuador in March. Who wants to come out for a visit while he is gone? We could go do something fun like a cruise, hike Grand Canyon, or lay out on the sandy beaches in San Diego.

Mario's only requirement is that I don't spend all the extra deployment money. We need it to buy a retirement home. Darn! :)

Mario's shrinking clothes

Well, it finally happened. Mario is starting to have to watch what he eats. He is trying to blame my washer and dryer for shrinking his clothes, but it might have more to do with Erin's good cooking. She makes her daddy cinnamon rolls, no bake cookies, chocolate chip cookies, biscuits, etc.

Not that I want Mario to gain weight or have to watch what he eats. But it is nice that he sees how the rest of us live. He said last night that "at least I've had a good run." He had 37+ years of eating whatever he wanted without thinking about gaining an ounce. Maybe it's going to be harder to talk him into another cruise if he knows he can't eat six times a day at the buffet.

BTW, I am not in implying that Mario is fat. He is 6'2", weighs under 180, and is totally ripped. I can't keep my hands off him.

Buzz

We love our dog, Buzz who has been part of our family almost as long as Erin. When we PCS'd to Guam, we had to give away our cat because of the high cost ($1400) of quarantine. We were all sad to say goodbye to Kramer. We tried to get the kids a fish in Guam, but a fish really isn't the same. So after a month or so, we visited the local animal shelter where we found Buzz. We were on our way to the mall and I asked Mario if we could just stop and "look" at the dogs. He knew better. But he let us stop anyway and after a couple hours of begging, he let us adopt Buzz (named after Buzz Lightyear). Buzz has been the best, but expensive dog. With moving all over, we have had to quarantine him in Hawaii (we weren't about to get rid of another pet due to quarantines) and we have had to pay for a couple overseas flights for him. He became a big part of our family.

I remember Erin falling asleep next to him when she was one. I remember taking Buzz out with us trick or treating and him being so excited that we almost had to take him home. Even now with him being almost 10 years old, he gets so excited about a walk. People often see how "puppy-like" he is when we are out walking and they think he is a puppy. We have to spell "walk" in our house or you will get him so excited he won't leave you alone until you take him. I remember the twins sitting in their little chairs on the floor eating their food and throwing Buzz half of it. We miss Buzz so much when we are on vacation and he is not with us to clean up any mess left on the floor from the kids eating. I remember lots of 3-5 mile runs with Buzz in Guam, Hawaii, and IL. Once when we were doing a 4 mile run, I felt so good when I got to the turn to go home, I decided to do it again. Buzz wasn't so happy about it, but he made it. I remember living in Guam and being so scared after the terrorist attacks because Mario was gone at night. But with Buzz, I knew everything was fine. As long as he wasn't barking, no one was inside or outside our home. He has always brought me a lot of peace when Mario is away.

Whenever we go on a trip, Buzz gets really sad. Whenever we pull the suitcases down from the closets, he will start whining. It is amazing because he knows when we get them out, even when we have the bedroom door closed. It breaks my heart. Mario likes to tease Buzz and say "Suitcases, we are getting our suitcases Buzz."

We are going to San Diego next week, so I got out the suitcase and started packing the twins clothes. Buzz was all the way downstairs and so there was no way he could see the suitcase, but he knew I was packing. When I came out of the twins room, he was standing on the staircase whining. He hardly ever goes on the stairs except when Zachary brings him up. I am trying to figure out how he knows about the suitcases. I didn't even unzip it today because it was already open.

We love Buzz and we don't know how much longer he will be part of the family. He has one bad knee and the vet said he will most likely injure the other side soon (most dogs do within 2-3 years of first injury.) I asked her if we would have to put him down once he isn't able to get up on his own anymore and she said, "oh, no." She said there are lots of medications she can give him that are similar to our Motrin. He will have to take pills everyday but he will not have any pain, so as long as he's happy and doing well, we can keep him. She estimated another 4 or 5 years at least. So that was really good news. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

We love you Buzz!

Lost Leaders

My mom has always tried to get me to shop at the local grocery stores for their lost leader products. But I never wanted to drag 4 children, especially a young set of twins, with me to the different grocery stores just to save a couple bucks. But now that my kids are all older and in school and with 2 big grocery stores within a mile of my house, I can now take advantage of these advertised prices. Today, I came home with 5 boxes of name brand cereal, tortillas, and two fresh pineapples for $10. I was one happy mom since I know with a husband and 4 hungry kids, we will go through at least a box of that cereal a day. I was in a bit of a hurry, but I will have to go back tomorrow and get lots more cereal and probably more pineapple too. Now I look forward to getting Safeway and Fry ads in my mailbox.

Proof we love Eric

If anyone needs proof that Eric is loved, here is the evidence. Yesterday, I looked for a good yeast-free recipe for Pizza. When I couldn't find one, I went to the store to see if I could find one that comes in a biscuit can. I finally found one without transfat and yeast. I excitedly went home and told Eric he could eat pizza with us last night. Then I made the rest of the family homemade dough. Then, I topped both pizzas with the expensive pepperoni that I bought from Whole Foods (no sodium nitrate). We got our movie ready and I pulled the pizzas out of the oven. Eric asked, "Mom, is that pepperoni on my pizza?" Eric can't have beef which was an ingredient in the pepperoni. So I went through all that effort to get him dough and then messed up by putting pepperoni on it. Mario rushed backed to the store to buy more dough and more cheese to make him a new pizza (while forfeiting his own warm pizza and movie.)

Then today, Mario promised to make cinnamon rolls with Erin. We have only made cinnamon rolls with yeast. Erin felt so bad that Eric wouldn't be able to eat them, she searched the internet for a yeast-free recipe. She has been doing that all week long looking for recipes for Eric. I often hear her say, "Poor Eric." She genuinely feels sorry for her brother.

We are anxious for this 4 weeks of no beef, chicken, and yeast to end. Hopefully those aren't the causes of his headaches. We are hoping it's trout causing the headaches, but not likely since he has never eaten trout before.

We all love you Eric. We feel your pain!

Nathan

Nathan has finally been bit by the reading bug. He was doing such a good job with his reading last school year, but since we moved in April, he has been less than enthusiastic about reading. It was to the point that if I could just get Nathan to read me a sentence, we were doing good. Even then, he would look for the shortest sentence. What was worse was that while Nathan was struggling with reading, Zachary was zooming way ahead and reading faster and better each day. Zachary became known as the better reader (I didn't label them that way, they labeled themselves.) That really made me sad for Nathan. I was really getting kind of worried about Nathan. When Zachary had to sound out a word, he only would sound it out once or twice and then after that, he remembered the word and he was able to read fast and fluently. Nathan on the other hand would sound out the same word each time he read it. I was starting to wonder if he had a learning disability. (I am probably a little paranoid since I work with kids that have learning disabilities.) Our family fasted and prayed for Nathan (we have more success getting Erin to fast if she feels like it is a worthy cause...fortunately she deemed Nathan a worthy cause.)

The past week has been terrific. Not only does he not fight me about reading a small sentence anymore, he started reading me several paragraphs. Now he is bringing me his books and asking me to listen to him read. I can tell that he has confidence now. That is all he lacked before. Mario sat and listened to Nathan read the other night and he later told me he was sad because he didn't know that Nathan had made so much progress. He felt like he had missed steps along the way. I assured Mario that he didn't miss anything. It was like a lightbulb turning on for Nathan and happened overnight. That is exactly what I prayed for.

Rodeo

I wouldn't consider us to be city people, but if you listened to the conversations that the kids had when we got out of the van on Monday for the Sonoita Labor Day Rodeo, you would have thought we have never seen the country before. Zachary was asking things like, "Are there going to be REAL horses here?" Mario and I were a little embarrassed. Everyone had on cowboy boots, hats, and huge belt buckles. We were quite the outsiders parking our mini van next to all the big Ford and Dodge Trucks. If that wasn't bad enough we stepped out in our tennis shoes and shorts.

It was great to see a "green" section of Arizona. It was about 10 degrees cooler and a lot greener than Tucson. I thought the rodeo would be fun for Erin since she is so in to horses. But after a couple hours, she was ready to go. She thought the announcer did way too much talking in between participants. But all in all, the kids had a great time watching four to six year-olds riding sheep and kids as young as five barrel racing. I have to admit, I had a hard time watching the 3 five-year-olds barrel racing. I was so nervous these tiny kids were going to fly off the horse. It made me feel pretty foolish for worrying so much about Erin on our recent trail ride. I think the kids favorite part was the snacks: popcorn, peanuts, and smoothies.

Erin bought herself a new hat that she has been wanting for a few months. She now looks sorta like a cowgirl, now time to buy the boots and the belt buckle...and if she got her wish...a horse!

Morning School

When I signed the boys up for afternoon kindergarten, my intention was to work with them in the mornings with some more challenging work. It has been almost 2 months since they started school and I am proud to say that I have worked with them I think every morning except when I was in San Diego. But even then, my mom worked with them. We don't work long, usually a little less than an hour. But it has been great. There are some mornings I dread it and would rather clean my house or do something more fun. But I resist the urge to skip it because I know if I skip it once, it will be easy to skip it again the next day.

We have been working on math, reading, and spelling. I have been using materials from my tutoring. So far the boys have learned how to spell the following sight words: would, could, should, were, some, says, your, Mrs., Mr., for, have, what, they, said, was, do, from, are, of does, and goes. They have also learned the following unit syllables: all, ank, ink, onk, unk, ang, ing, ong, and ung. We practice reading each day for a few minutes. It is fun to watch each of them develop and see, even though they are twins, they have far different strengths. Zach excels in reading while Nathan excels in spelling. In math, we have been working on adding and subtracting and learning place value. We even started doing some fractions after Nathan and Zachary showed some interest in them while we were driving to the rodeo the other day. I am so happy with the progress they are making.

In our home, we spell anything we don't want the kids to know what we are saying. Obviously that hasn't worked on Eric and Erin for a long time. But now it no longer works with Nate and Zach. Erin gets really annoyed that they can spell now because she can no longer communicate with me without them knowing what she is saying. She also gets mad because she doesn't think I should teach them so much because then they will be bored in school like her. I tell her there are worse problems than being bored in school, I don't feel too bad for her.

Here are some sample writing samples from the boys. One is from early August and one from today. Zach's handwriting has really improved and Nathan's has always been pretty good.

Zachary-8/3/09 (with a little note from Nate on the bottom...Zachary is awesome)

Zachary's writing today...9/9/09

Nathan 8/3/09

Nathan today...9/9/09

Allergy Tests

Eric is still undergoing different tests to see if the doctor can find a cause for his occasional migraines. He recently had an MRI and saw an eye doctor. Fortunately the MRI came back perfect and Eric's vision seems fine. The next step was to see an Allergist. Poor Eric got poked 80+ times in his back. I don't think Eric had any severe reactions to any of the items they tested, but he did have slight reactions to the following foods:

Shrimp, avocado, beef, peanuts, chicken, trout, hazelnut,

peach, grapefruit, cherry, plum, yeast, and oyster.

So the doctor asked Eric not to eat any of the above foods for the next 4 weeks to see if it makes any differences in his migraines. Most of those are pretty easy to avoid, but yeast...that is a hard one. The good news, for me anyway, is that he is not allergic to wheat. Maybe we can have pasta for the next 4 weeks! I would save a lot of money and energy on cooking! Poor Eric, no more hamburgers, sandwiches, pizza...at least for 4 weeks anyways.

Math Counts

Mario and I try to encourage our children to get as much math as possible. We were excited when Eric came home and told us that he chose Math Counts as his elective this year in 7th grade. Now before you call him a nerd, let me say, the alternatives were things like chorus and band. So math didn't sound to bad compared to music classes. To get into Math Counts, you have to have a strong background in Math. Fortunately Eric was selected to be in the class. His teacher recently sent home a newsletter with some samples of math problems that they work on. I consider Mario and I pretty good at math, but some of these problems made us say "What in the World?!" You can test your math skills with some of these sample problems:

The average age of a group of teachers and students is 20. The average age of teachers is 35. The average age of students is 15. What is the ratio of teachers to students? Express your answer as a fraction in simplest form.

Find the smallest positive whole number that does not contain the digit 9, but it is divisible by 999.

George has a combination lock with the numbers 0 -39. He must enter three numbers in the correct order to open the lock. He tells his friend Jordy that one of the numbers is 23. What is the probability that Jordy guesses George's combination correctly?

It gives me a headache just trying to figure out how to start figuring these problems out. Today we took Eric to Subway for lunch. We told him it was a working lunch and he needed to show us how to solve that first problem (on his napkin.) Mario and I thought that the problem was definitely missing some important information. But Eric quickly showed us how to solve the problem.

Nice Try!

When I went upstairs to put the laundry away, I realized that the boys had been very quiet so I figured they must be playing in their room. When I went in their room to put their laundry away, they weren't there. So then I proceeded to go look for them. As I was walking out of their room, Zach walked up and asked me as any mother would ask their child, "what are you doing?" I about laughed. He had this look on his face that he was busted, but he was trying to get out of it by questioning me, like I was doing something wrong. Turns out, he was confiscating a gift that he had recently given to Erin. He said he was taking it back because Erin wasn't being nice. So, he really was up to no good and he was busted. Nice try Zachary!

Bedtime

Eric usually doesn't let his lack of sleep affect his behavior or mood. So Mario and I aren't too strict with him on his bedtime. Often times, we go to bed before him. But, the last few days he has been going to sleep at 8 with the exception of last night when he had Boy Scouts and then an outing with Mario to the ice cream shop until almost 9 pm.

He told me this morning that he likes going to bed at 8 pm now. He feels so much better in the mornings. I was glad that I didn't have to say anything to him about adjusting his bedtime to help him recover from all his extra-curricular activities. He's growing up. I bet he wouldn't admit to any of his friends he plans to go to bed so early, but I am hoping he sticks with this new routine and we no longer find him reading in bed until 10 pm or later.

Erin's horses

While Mario and I were in San Diego recently we were looking for a small gift to bring back to Erin. We came across a horse drawing book but decided not to buy it since I didn't think Erin liked to draw horses. When we returned from our trip, she was excited to show us what she had drawn while we were gone. Goes to show, we have a lot to learn about Erin and her varied interests.

Interviews

We try to hold weekly interviews with each of the kids. Unfortunately they usually end up being monthly interviews because we get busy and forget. The saying "A way to a man's heart is through his stomach" must apply to boys as well. I always ask the kids how we, as parents, can improve. Nathan's answer was to make more macaroni and cheese. Zachary's was to let him eat Trix cereal. Eric's answer was to not make him any more ham sandwiches for lunch.

I am not kidding, this is what all the boys said individually without hearing the other's responses. I guess they only area I need improving with my boys is in the meals. (I wish that were true.)

For those wondering what Erin said...Erin is a typical girl and always thinking she is being shortchanged. Her complaint was that Mario and I take the good cruises (Alaska) and only took her on one cheap cruise. I told her I guess since she didn't appreciate the one cruise, we won't take her on anymore.