We packed a swim suit, blanket, pillow, pants, shorts, t-shirt and hoodie. We wore short, s-shirt and flip flops. We also packed Capri Suns, bottles of water, chips, cheese and fruit. Then we filled up the tank and hit the road. My dog stayed behind with my dad.

We took our time getting there; stopping when we wanted for food, potty breaks and sight seeing. The boys went to sleep around 11 and I stopped to sleep at an oasis on the Ohio or Pennsylvania Toll road around 1am.

We woke up around 6am and got back on the road. Later in the evening we saw signs for caverns. As we drove we realized they were only 5 miles off the expressway so we stopped to find out the details. They said it was cold and sandy down there and they suggest pants and a light jacket. They also said it was uneven and sandy and our flip flops may be uncomfortable. Sadly we left because we thought our entertainment would be the beach…not an underground adventure.

As we were heading back to the expressway we discussed the possibility of finding a local store to purchase shoes. We found a Kmart, bought cute and inexpensive canvas tennis shoes and headed back to the caverns. Yayee!!!

It cost around $35 for the three of us to take the tour. We thought it was the neatest thing we had ever seen. The tour lasted over an hour and we went around 250 feet underground. It was amazing! The tour guide was awesome and let us spend as much time looking as we wanted. The children each purchased a rock for under $2 in the gift shop. Then we were back on the road.

One of the rest areas in Virginia had MANY flyers for things to do there. We picked up a lot of them to look through as the kids place. We arrived there around 11pm and visited for an hour or so and went to bed. Z and I slept on either side of a L-shaped sofa and B slept on a futon mattress on the floor.

While we were there we went to Virginia Beach twice. There was a hurricane somewhere that was creating bigger than usual waves so it was quite exciting. On our second trip to the beach the boys got caught up in the rip tide. They were not swept far out to sea but were out over my (and their) head and the tide was pulling them quickly down the beach, parallel to the beach.

I kept my eyes on them the entire time and at first I thought they were goofing around because I kept signaling them to come back up to shore and they just waved at me and kept playing. Actually, I think they were ignoring me at first. But soon I realized they were floating and after a minute that meant they were treading water. I was also having to cut through families playing on the beach to keep up with them on land and soon realized they were caught in the current.

This had happened to me once on a beach in Lake Michigan so I knew they were in a serious situation. It was quite scary because I am not a strong swimmer. I was swept off my feet and into water over my head and could not get back to shore. Thank God that I had heard of this and had been told to swim parallel to the shore. I was not able to swim parallel to the shore but instead focused on staying afloat, which is not an easy task in choppy water, and eventually the current took my back toward shore…much father down than my friends. Anyhow, I began signaling and hollering for them to swim down shore instead of toward the shore. I do not think they understood. They seemed to try to swim toward me.

I was half way between life guards and they were traveling so fast that I did not want to take my eyes off them to backtrack to the lifeguard I had passed before I realized they were in trouble. I headed out into the water to see if maybe they were not over my head, but they were. My youngest said, “help”. The sand was very uneven and had many drop offs and I kept falling in over my head. There was a couple closer to them than me. The boys were getting ready to float by this couple when I asked them if they would grab my children for me. They both swam less than 4 feet out and brought them to where they could touch again.

Thank GOD. I knew better than to get out where I could not touch because then all three of us would need to be rescued!

This experience scared my youngest. He does not even want to look at pictures from the entire trip because it reminds him of being caught in the water. He was so tired that he thought he was going to drown in a few minutes. They had been treading water for at least 3 minutes from the time I realized they were in trouble until the time the couple snatched them out of the water. I was, and still am very traumatized also. That experience has given me a fresh appreciation for our mortality…not that I needed it.

While we were there we were able to meet Ronald roommates. They seem to get along well as roommates. I was also able to get to know Shayna’s boyfriend a bit. He seems like a wonderful young man. They seem to really enjoy one another a lot.

The boys and Ronald and I went to Journey to the Center of The Earth in 3D. The digital RealD 3D is awesome! I love it!. I lost a contact and had to wear my glasses to the 3d effect was not as good as it would have been if I had my contacts.

Shayna misses the boys a lot. She was very sad to see us go. She is a mamas girl too so it was hard when we said good bye.

I miss my older children so much. I am very proud of the young people they have become. They are wonderful. It is amazing how great they in spite of all the challenges they have faced in their lives so far. It was wonderful to see them.

A pen broke in our pen canister yesterday. I discovered this when I pulled out a pen and promptly discovered blobs of sticky blue ink on my hands. I immediately threw that broken pen away, but foolishly left the rest of the pens in the canister, along with the inky mess in the bottom.

Later that day I discovered a big blob of ink on the cream colored ink in the master bedroom and the following day I found several smudges of ink on my vintage sofa. I am the only one that likes this sofa, but I am sentimental about it. It is not ugly; it is just out of style…well, other people’s style because it is exactly my style. I fell in love with it when I saw it and when I learned that is was for sale for only $25 I had to have it.  It is really a love seat, but my living space is very small so it is perfect. It is covered with varying shades of a textured, gold floral print. Some parts have a satiny sort of look and others have a rougher look. It reminds me of my beloved grandmother’s blue and green furniture before she upgraded to an ugly tan and brown plaid sleeper sofa. As you can imagine I was very upset to see my lovely sofa damaged.

I immediately Googled “how to remove ball point pen ink” and discovered many ways of cleaning this mess. Most people recommended spraying the area with aerosol hair spray and blotting the area, repeating until it is clean. I had hair spray but not aerosol kind. I decided to try rubbing alcohol.

I filled the cap with alcohol then poured a bit on the stain then blotted it with a paper towel being careful to use a clean area of towel every with every dab so I would not re-stain the carpet. I continued to wet the area with more alcohol when it became dry or the towel appeared clean when I dabbed it.  When I finished, I fluffed the carpet a bit and I could not tell that there had ever been ink there.

Since that worked so well I thought I would attempt to clean my beloved sofa. Thankfully it came completely clean too! And, it did not discolor my sofa or carpet.

My next job was to clean the canister that started this whole mess. I put the pens on a paper towel and poured a bit of rubbing alcohol in the bottom of the canister and swished it around a bit. The canister is a vintage Kodak D-78 Developer can left over from my fathers dark room when I was a child so I did not want to throw it away. As the alcohol continued to do its work dissolving the ink in the canister I cleaned the pens and markers.

Several pens had a lot of ink gooped on the bottom so I soaked those in the alcohol in the canister while I cleaned the other, less inky pens. I moistened a paper towel with rubbing alcohol and rubbed each one until they were all clean. I used about half a roll of paper towel and half a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

After cleaning the pens I carefully ( this is a vintage can so the inner edges are sharp!) wiped the inside of the can. I did not have the patience to get every speck of ink off the bottom. I put a sponge in the bottom of the can to prevent the damage of future pens so I am not worried about more mess right now.

I did manage to stain my fingers and hands, but scrubbing them with alcohol and a clean paper towel removed all the ink except a tiny bit around the edges of my fingernails. I will attempt to remove that ink with q-tips and alcohol tonight.

Last night we stayed up late snuggling and watching movies. My girlfriend came around 11pm and stayed until 2am. I cut out the fabric for my next bag while we chatted. This morning we struggled to get out of bed to go to breakfast with my dad, but had fun anyhow. After breakfast we all went shopping and found some great, cheap books at the Borders Outlet. Then we dropped my dad back off at home and visited a long lost friend. While my friend and I lounged around chatting, the boys washed our cars and sprayed on another with the hose. On the way home we had ice cream desserts and french fries for dinner.

Tomorrow we will go to church with my father then head to my brothers for Fathers Day lunch with his family. It will be another fun day.

Give your fathers hugs and kisses and tell them that you love and appreciate them. Life is precious, you  may not get another day.

After several years of minimal growth he had another growth hormone stimulation test. This time it showed that his body produced amazingly low amounts of growth hormone when stimulated. This was wonderful news for us. It meant that he was finally able to get the treatment he needed. We were not happy to learn that his body was not functioning properly, but we already knew that. It was also good timing because his self esteem was beginning to be affected. People generally thought he was two to three years younger than he really was. Thank GOD he is home schooled and was able to avoid daily teasing.

He has been receiving daily injections of Genotropin, a growth hormone for over a year. He has grown 4.5 inches in the past twelve months! It is a miracle

The body produces growth hormone while we sleep, so to more closely mimic how our bodies work, we give the hormone right before bed. Actually, my son prefers that I give it to him after he has fallen asleep! Occasionally he will wake up, go to the bathroom and come back a bit groggy but ready for the injection. He says that having it after he has fallen asleep alleviates any pre-injection anxiety.

Around nine months old he began to fall out of the “average” height range on the growth charts and has been way below ever since. The doctors estimated that he would be lucky to reach 5’3” without treatment. The last time we visited the pediatric endocrinologist he had finally entered the “average” height range for his age. This time he is about in the middle of the average height! It is absolutely amazing to see the spikes on his growth chart after seeing it barely moving for most of his life.

That makes me think of the deep, dark-red Sweet Williams at the big house. They were a gift from a very talented gardener friend. I knew they were annuals so I was pleasantly surprised when they came back the following year. I watched them closely and learned that after the flowers faded a seed pod grew and eventually “popped” and flew seeds everywhere. It was amazing!  They were my favorite of all my flowers in my garden. Sadly, I was not able to take them with me when I moved and have not been able to find that color again. Maybe someday that velvety variety will cross my path so we can share our summers once again.

The garden in the big house was a wonderful experience. My friends donated many annuals and perennials to my garden the first year. Every year after that my friends and acquaintances exchanged seeds, cuttings, roots and transplants every year. I even had people I didn’t know pull into my driveway and ask for a cutting! It was difficult to leave that garden. Every flower and plant reminded me of a friendship or a get-together. It was like a floral scrapbook! I hope to have the same sort of experience when I finally get settled into my home in the country.

“If it’s your family…are you showing it?”

“If not…what are you going to do about it?”

These questions are the essence of a wonderful book called “What Kids Wish Parents Knew About Parenting” by Joe White, recommended by Gary Smalley and Josh McDowell. This is an in-your-face book. It does not tiptoe around. It encourages parents to go straight to our children for an evaluation (included in the book) of our parenting skills and to do something drastic about it. He says “…I urge you to strip away – with dynamite, if necessary – everything in your life that doesn’t look like family gold.”

That comment stuck with me. Everything I begin to do I ask myself if this is family gold. Everything I touch or look at in my home I wonder if it is family gold. I am determined to get rid of all things that are not family gold.  

I read hundreds of parenting books and listened daily to family and parenting advice programs while my 18 and 19 year olds were young. I wanted to be the best parent I could be. My full time job was being a quality mother. Somewhere between dealing with a mentally ill and abusive husband and moving around and my own battle with depression, I forgot how to be a quality mother.

While watching Super Nanny, my boys told me that we should call her. Curiously, I asked why. They said she could help us. They wanted her to help get their father back into our family. But, they also wanted me to devote more time to them, to make them feel important to me. Ouch! I decided I need to make some changes in my behavior but I was not sure where to start.

The following week while we were watching Super Nanny they suggested that we call her again. I asked them to be more specific as to what they hope she would do for us they said that they want me to spend more time with them, play games and do projects with them and other things which are basically quality time.

I am a full time, homeschooling stay at home mom. My life is supposed to be devoted to my children. I felt that I was giving them enough of me, but their comments tell me that I am very wrong. I thought that much of their troubles were from tragic life circumstances (that is another blog) but I was terribly wrong. I have been too involved in myself and chores that I had forgotten to stop and fully listen and respond as I would any other human being, instead I had been somewhat blowing them off when it was not convenient for me to listen ( such as while I am writing this ).

I decided that I need a refresher in quality parenting. Thank GOD for Super Nanny. Thank GOD for my children’s ability to tell it to me like it is. Thank GOD for putting this book in my hands at the perfect time. I picked it up the other day at a book sale for a quarter and thought I may read it someday. Well, someday is now.

First, we went to Italia Gardens for pasta and yummy bread. While there we thought it would be neat if their friends came too. I called my girlfriend and her husband was home so they packed their lawn chairs, snacks and blankets in their truck and met us there.

It got pretty chilly. I was silly and didn’t even think about dressing warm for the evening weather, but it worked out fine. The children all crawled in the truck to stay warm while the adults snuggled in blankets outdoors and chatted while watching the movie. We had fun.

I bet you are wondering what we thought of the Indiana Jones movie? We loved it. It was exactly what we expected. It had all the silly adventure that the other movies had plus a sweet sappy ending. I especially love that they always make it out of dangerous situations by the “hair of their teeth”.  It is completely unrealistic but totally entertaining.

The other day my girlfriend met a man named Mr. Russel. He has known her father for many years. He shared with her that he taught at the schoolhouse when it was still on Minor Rd. He confirmed that most people in that town went to that school when they were children.

This tidbit is not schoolhouse related, but interesting anyhow. He gets a special permit from the DNR to hunt from his vehicle because he is 90-something and has a hard time walking around. In case you didn’t know, hunting is a big part of life in that area and it is illegal to shoot an animal from your vehicle.

As a single, homeschooling mom, I have been researching ways of earning income to support our homeschool and to enable me to continue to stay at home full time with my children. It would be wonderful to have the children involved in the process also.

I have considered blogging for an income. I would have to decide on an area to focus on rather than writing about anything and everything. What do I know a lot about? What do I love?

I have been homeschooling forever. All of my children ages 19 (20 next month), 18, 12 and 10 have been homeschooled. The oldest attended school until second grade and the next child attended kindergarten.

I have lots of experience with parenting, marriage, marriage and mental illness ( bipolar disorder), licensed home day care, frugal living,  raising chickens, gardening, canning and bulk canning, breastfeeding, family bed, baby slings and attachment parenting.

What about handicrafts? I enjoy all sorts of handicrafts. I especially like crocheting, knitting, sewing, taking pictures, painting and drawing, cooking, baking, woodworking, toy making and much more. My favorite hobby is to take something old and worn out (used up?) and turning it into something new and useful, or taking something and using it in a new and unexpected way. 

I recently learned of a woman that creates bags, backpacks, purses and quilts from soldiers clothing. She donates bags to women whose husbands have been seriously injured or killed in the war made from their uniform. She sells bags and other items to families made from their soldiers uniform. They are beautiful. My son is in the U.S. Navy so that really touched my heart. I would love to have a bag made from his worn out uniform. I would get great joy reusing a soldiers uniform to create something new to bring joy to his family. I have never sewn for money but have made plenty of quilts and items for my children and home. My favorite thing I have sewn was the life size Raggedy Ann style dolls (4 year old size child) that were made to resemble my children. My children shared their clothes with the dolls. It was so cute.

Since I love handicrafts so much, maybe it would be better to make something to sell. I just don’t know. I will continue to pray about what to do while I experiment with different ideas.

I did make a little bag from an old pair of the ex’s pants from the army…you know the kind with the big cargo pockets. It is reversible and both pockets are lined with coordinating fabric. The dvd case is for size reference. I think it turned out rather cute for my first purse.

 ….I attempted to add several photos of my new bag. I see them in the media library as attached to this post but do not see them here. If you know how to fix that please write me. Thanks.