The girls and I have endured a very trying 2009. A lot of changes have came our way. I cannot discuss every single detail of what is going on because we still have pending court hearings that are unresolved.

I will say this “When a door closes, a window opens so your soul can soar above like no other.”. This is my personal saying and I live it everyday.

Some major changes have occured for us. Unfortunately, and to my children’s dismay, we no longer homeschool. It just isn’t an option at the moment right now, but maybe we can get back to it in a few years.

Kammie is almost 10 and growing like a weed. Zoe is almost 8!!! My babies are growing so quickly that it is unbelievable. After everything they have been through over the past year, they are still the most amazing children I have met. Yes, I am biased and proud of it!

I will begin blogging again, but can’t throw a whole lot out there until all the legal mess has been straightened and taken care of. I did, however, want to reach out to my old friends and say I love y’all, and miss y’all dearly!

I’m thrilled to be back!

The posts that I make that shouldn’t be out there yet, will be password protected. Comment here letting me know your addy and if you are approved to see those posts, I will forward the password to you. Please do not be offended if you are not approved.

Thanks!

Allo, allo… We have been extremely busy here this past week. We have had two full weeks of school now! Here is what the girls have been up to:

1. Math is going swimmingly. Zoe can add and subtract up to FIFTEEN, and she still can count to twenty! WooT! Kammie can multiply with ease up through the fives. They have finished up their lapbooks from Homeschool Share and are really excited over that. We have spent way too much time on them.

2. In the science world we are learning about jellyfish and sea stars. Yes, we really do spend about three weeks on each creature listed in TWTM book. I am just like that, and it seems to work very well with the girls. They have also began learning about classification and different phyla.

3. In History we are finally getting ready to move into Crete! I am so excited. We deviated the suggested timeline and spent a long time on Ancient Egypt, a favorite subject of the girls. They didn’t want to stop when the book went to a new chapter, so we paused and let them learn how to find non fiction library books on the subject!

4. For reading, we have been slowly plugging along. Zoe is moving on up in the decodables and is almost ready to read them by herself. I am so proud of her! Kammie is doing wonderfully and is now able to read AND comprehend chapter books (Big step there!). We are also using McGuffey’s eclectic speller with both girls.

5. We haven’t started Latin year. I have a confession, I am scared. LOL! The girls found my old Spanish textbook from hs and took it upon themselves to hold their own Spanish classes taught by Professor Kammie Lee.

6. Art appreciation has been spent studying Degas and we have been working on a few crafts to go along with that. In our world of Art techniques they are reviewing the color wheel and having fun seeing how to blend to make colors (this may seem really juvenile for Kammie, but we needed to go there. ) Next week they will be studying lines and white space, which we will probably stay on for a few weeks.

7. Language Arts- We are still on LL 1 for levels 1 & 2. Believe it or not Zoe is following along and keeping up! We are also supplementing with some great books by Brian Cleary. They are
Hairy, Scary, Ordinary: What Is an Adjective?
A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What Is a Noun?
To Root to Toot to Parachute: What Is a Verb?

We plan on reading all of his books many times over just to help reinforce what we are learning. I love the books, they are wonderfully illustrated and brilliantly written. The girls love reading them, so that makes them winners in my book.

The girls have read over 120 books this summer, not including school books. I feel like there should be some sort of celebration. I have no problem rewarding learning (tsk, tsk, bad mom), but I don’t know what we should do. They have had their names entered six times each to win a basket full of prizes at the library. For every twenty books the kiddos get to put their names in, yeah… It doesn’t seem fair… LOL

In my every day news:

Ingles will only double 3 coupons for every ten dollars spent. Did you know that? LMBO! I didn’t… They offered only face value after that. Word to the wise for everyone here, Publix doubles as many as you can bring in, as long as they are under fifty cents each. Awesome. Ingles is bad in my book. Exactly how many companies are going to end up on my no shop zone list? I am beginning to feel very limited. Oh, well.

We have found a brilliant piece of property. Justin is actually considering my ‘far fetched’ (his term, not mine) idea of wall tent living until we can build our home by hand. I am tired of being trapped in the city, a city that won’t let me have chickens!!!!! I want chickens!!!! *sigh*

I will post strictly pictures tomorrow while at the library. It will be fun. Wordless Saturday doesn’t quite have the same ring though, does it?

I hope everyone is having a great summer! Toodles!

Let me preface this by saying I have a million and one things to be thankful for. But, these events keep throwing me for loops…. Okay, public service announcement is over.

Guess what happened here at 11:23 last night? Come on, guess. You know you wanna. Remember how I said that four or five years ago this place was perfect? It was so quaint, quite, peaceful and full of tranquility…. I now have a different opinion, sadly.

Okay.. I will tell you since you won’t guess. At 11:23 pm I was laying in bed with dh (Get your heads out of the gutter, he was asleep and I was stuck awake due to all the crap going on with the drug house. I can’t sleep at all now…), when all of the sudden I hear it. Shots. That was gun shots. Four, right in a row. It wasn’t fireworks, nope I know what both sound like. It was gunshots. I woke dh up absolutely about to have a cow. He started to dismiss me (he is in HUGE trouble), but then he heard another shot. The four shots that came in rapid succession were followed by one lone shot. It wasn’t deafening to my ears but it was to my mind,  heart and soul.

I called the local dispatch and they seemed to have gotten several calls in regarding the same issue. They were sending out quite a few cars to see if they could figure out what was going on.  Dispatch received multiple calls about hearing shots fired, however no one called in reporting seeing the incident take place. The police couldn’t find ANYTHING. After thirty minutes of searching it was labeled an unfounded case.

I did NOT sleep last night. We are moving. I don’t care what it takes. We are moving sooner rather than later and to help speed up dh’s thought process, the children will be sleeping in our room. He is more of a visionary unless he sees no way out. I am hoping to help him see.

That sums up my night/morning on Nancy Street. UGH! I also want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Angela! Thank you for chatting with me. I truly needed the distraction!

I have two awesome recipes for laundry detergent! The one I use in my front loader, I was given by Tara. The other I heard on one of my soaping sites.

Front loader:                       Top Loader

1 box of Borax                    1 bar of Fels Naptha Soap

2 boxes of Baking Soda      1 box of Borax

2 boxes of Baking Soda

That’s it. If you use the above recipes, your clothes come out sooooooooooooo fresh and clean! No harsh dyes, bonus!

I don’t use Fabric Softener either. Well, not store bought anyway. For a top loader I used 1/4 cup of WHITE vinegar, it has to be WHITE vinegar. For the front loader I use about half as much. This makes it so I can hang my clothes out on the line and they don’t get all stiff. Plus, when you bring your clothes in toss them in the dryer for ten minutes if they feel stiff for some reason. Works great!

I am always saying I want to move. I want to move out into the middle of nowhere. I honestly have this need to do this. I want to live in a tent, well some people call them Jungle Houses, but I say ‘Nice Tent’. I bet you know who sent me that link, don’t you? You are right, it was the loverly Tara!

Now…would you like to know why I have this deep need to do this? My answer is simple, yet complex at the same time. The simple answer: “The world is full of bad people, in an urban setting there is a greater gathering of bad people because there are simply more people.” (You know, the more apples that one person has will increase the number of bad apples…) and my complicated answer… Well, let me just show you a glimpse of my diary entry for Saturday:

*Book creaks open, fumbling to find page* Ah, hah! Here it is! Read and you will see why I want to move.

**********************************

July 25th, 2008

Dear Diary,

I was thrilled to find this quaint little house a mere five years ago. I fell in love with the small lot because it was fairly large to be downtown, the YARD for the children to play in. Oh, how I spied a diamond in the rough. Mom was the one who found the house when it went up for lease purchase. She knew it would be perfect for us; of course it had nothing to do with the fact that it put us at a five minute drive away. So we were smitten. We moved in and began making this house our home.

Life on Nancy Street was so brilliantly quiet. There were elderly people occupying most houses so it was very quiet. The sun rising in the morning would highlight the squirrels scurrying about before the heat of the day sat in. Even in the middle of the most horrifying electrical storm, the street was beautiful. I found my piece of heaven on earth and a bit of charm to go with it. I was so thrilled. It was also a very nice bonus that our neighbors across the street began thinking of our girls as family. I will never be able to express to Mrs. P and Mrs. W what their presence means to all of us.

Fast forward to Saturday. I knew this day was coming. After all, it was obvious to anyone who lives here that there is simply TOO much ‘fast’ traffic. When I say ‘fast’ I mean, pull up to leave the car running whilst someone rings the doorbell, that talk for a moment and then the person is back in the car. Good gravy! Honestly. This was happening ALL the time, ALL hours of the day. Something had to stop it. But, then the situation grew even graver than I could have imagined. A foul smell started wafting about. It was a very sweet, yet completely debilitating aroma. The first scent was so sweet that you couldn’t even think, then within seconds you had a migraine hit like a freight truck and instantly nausea would sweep over you. All of these things have been turned in by our neighborhood watch association to the local authorities for quite some time now.

Because the house was full of no-gooders, the Police were familiar with them. We have even had to call the police because a 16 yo that lived there told my children “If Mommy calls the cops again, we will make sure you don’t see here again.”. That is almost a direct quote of what was said to my oldest little girl. Never in my life had I thought to own a handgun, until that day. The Police came out and Officer Anonymous came out to our house. You couldn’t have asked for a sweeter, more understanding person to come out. The Officer explained because no one else (My husband, me or the neighbors) heard it, she couldn’t arrest them but we had a great civil suit. This is where my frustration and concern set in.

Then today came and it all snowballed. Today has really been a rollercoaster of emotions for me. We knew a bad form of people had moved in to the vacant rental house diagonal to us within their first week of moving in. Traffic flow has increased, theft is up and general no-gooders are now hanging out at every corner.
Well, someone at the local Police Department got wind of the new problem reports. Fortunately this someone has been out to the bad house before due to calls of disturbances, etc. This someone was chomping at the bit to get out here and get their hands on what they had grown to suspect was a meth lab. A METH LAB on my street?!?! Yep, that is what they thought. Now, let me add a tidbit of info here: When Police Officers normally come out to the house, people run and a lot of teens run. If the Officers go to the side of the house then they run out of the back, so on and so forth. You get what I am trying to say.

Back on track…

On this peaceful, sunny Saturday our world stopped moving. All of the sudden at least four Police cars flanked the house. It looked like the SWAT team was moving in if you were judging just by tactics used. They sent Officers around front, around back and flanking the sides of the house. Sadly, they didn’t need to do this because someone had tipped off the people there. They knew something was going to happen. There was only a lady there, I will call her L. At this point I expected the camera crew from COPS to jump out and get in on the action.

Within seconds, L was in cuffs and from the word on the street she was arrested for outstanding warrants and drugs but, I don’t know for sure so don’t quote me on that. The Police Officers were leading L. around in cuffs asking why there were supersized padlocks on the back detached carport/shed. L. offered to let them in, but thankfully the Police Officers decided to wait. They arrested L. and she was hauled off. Now, this seems like a short amount of time that I am typing out, but it seemed like an eternity when it went down.

Then two wonderful Police Officers were stuck with the boring and HOT job of waiting for the Drug Investigator to pull a warrant, since they had probable cause it would be no issue. Those two Officers were awesome. They talked to the girls and let us feed the poor puppy at the bad house, very sweet gentlemen. I asked Justin to go pick them up two Powerades. They couldn’t leave the house because they didn’t want anyone to come and disturb the soon to be investigation area. Justin got back with the drinks and Kammie helped me walk them over to the bad house. The Officers were so appreciative and even entertained a letter from Kammie that said she wanted to grow up to be as strong and brave as they were. I love my little girl!

After two hours of waiting the warrant was signed by the Judge. The Investigators came out, they brought along a kid (I say kid in the nicest way; he couldn’t have been more than 20!)with a camera that I would love to have. He took the pictures while they bagged evidence and bagged more evidence. Oh, my. They didn’t find what they were looking for (to my knowledge, I say this because according to the authorities a special team would be brought in if a Meth lab was found.) but they found quite a bit, evidently. They were out there for two hours, searching and gathering more evidence. I don’t know what they found, nor do I know if I want to honestly. I would rather be dumb for now.

About an hour after the Investigators left, something else happened. Someone broke into the bad house! Yes, you read that right. Someone had the brains to break into a house that had just been swept by the authorities. Well, this was a lady who no one has seen before. It was reported to dispatch as a break in because the lady actually broke a window to climb in. The Police almost didn’t get to the house in time, but they made it.

When the Officer pulled up, he jumped out of the car and started yelling at the lady that had broken in to get some duffel bags out of the house. He started screaming “Put your hands up! Get down on the ground! On the ground now! Get down!” and brandishing his gun. That was my cue to get inside as fast as I could, thankfully the girls were under strict orders to stay in. Within minutes another Police car arrived at the scene and seconds later the lady was cuffed. Come to find out there was a child in the car. This made my heart break because he was 10. Old enough to be scarred for life. Who in their right mind would bring their child to this house, let alone bringing them when she was breaking in somewhere? Ugh.

After talking to her for awhile, they decided to let her go. They were talking to her while they were searching the truck and the duffel bags and verifying everyone’s identity. But, in the end she was let go for whatever reason. I find myself musing “Where is the camera crew??? The shirtless white guy tearing through the yard trying to outrun a Police car chasing him?”. Again, I would rather be dumb.
So this was my Saturday. Really, why does it have to be this way? I told the events of the day to one of my favorite librarians (Hey!) and she said that the struggling economy will make people do anything. I was really taken back by that comment. I had never thought of that possibility before. What if someone was doing this because of the economy? I know it is still very bad and very wrong, but what it? How sad is that?

With this, I am saying the end for today. I am tired but I have consumed a gallon of coffee (eeeew!) so I can stay up. With all of this happening I wasn’t about to go to sleep.

******************end entry*******

Now, I don’t keep a diary, but maybe I should… LOL I

Since all this has happened I have slept 8 hours. Eight hours since Saturday which is only 1/3 of what my body truly needs.
I am barely functioning today. I am going to a local gun range this weekend. I am going to rent a handgun and one of my guy friend’s is going to meet Justin and me there. We are going to learn how to load the gun, the safety switch and how to fire the weapon correctly. After we figure out which ones are more comfortable for us, we will go next door and buy them. This isn’t too much of a stretch for us because we have rifles and have used rifles.

Believe it or not, this city girl knows how to shoot a deer that is 20 yards or so off. I am a good shot if I say so myself. The girls are going to be well educated about gun use. The firearms will not be kept loaded but the ammunition will be kept not too far away. I am going to take every precaution that I possibly can because I don’t want someone in this house injured by a bad incident. I believe in being Proactive instead of Reactive. Why am I being Reactive to this situation? I can give a one word answer. Denial. It won’t happen here. Not here.

Well, it did. How sad. I would rather be out in a field in a tent with rifles than holed up here near the bad house. I suppose that is just me. Justin doesn’t think I could ‘handle’ tent living. I told him my only problem would be mosquitoes and less bathing but that I would live. He still doesn’t believe me though. We shall see.

That was my Saturday how was yours?

]]> http://bishopfamily.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/you-know-how-i-am-always-saying-i-want-to-move/feed/ 8 Diannaleigh http://bishopfamily.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/a-wonderous-giveaway/ http://bishopfamily.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/a-wonderous-giveaway/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:49:10 +0000 diannaleigh http://bishopfamily.wordpress.com/?p=200 ]]>

I love her Lila Tueller’s fabric! She is holding a giveaway for some wonderful fabric! Go check it out and good luck to all!

You know, the time where most parents are ravaging shelves for every last item their children need for school. Causing the crazed chaos when there are no more Hannah Montana or Batman bookbags that their children are demanding.

This year, I get to breathe a sigh of relief. This will be our first full year homeschooling. I firmly believe homeschooling is the best education for my children. This month has proved something more than that. This month has also shown how good homeschooling is for me! Yes, it is tiring and some days I am beyond the edge of sanity, but I don’t have this three week panic that ensues right before school starts back! This year I can join ship with my homeschooling allies and lean back in the chairs as the parents of children enrolled in school systems panic.

I am not saying anything bad about parents or children in public school. If they made that choice, I am sure they made it for the benefit of their family. So, let’s not judge. The only reason I feel this way is because last year I remember the horror stories of my children’s first days and weeks at school. I am SO glad that this year, I get to completely pass over that phase.

I did sneak into Walmart at 4 am this morning…Yes, 4 am… I bought school supplies. I despise Walmart and normally refuse to go there, but 5 cent notebooks broke my train of thought regarding the evil empire. I bought 2 cases. Someone save me!

I am not! I promise. I normally don’t celebrate and make a huge deal out of every little thing that the kids accomplish. Don’t misunderstand, I give them compliments and brag when they have done very well. This is one of those times that I am going to gush, scream, jump and shout for joy!!!

ZOE CAN COUNT
TO NINETEEN!

KAMMIE HAS LEARNED HER MULTIPLICATION TABLES!

Celebration pics will come later! I am so proud of the girls!!!!!

LOL! My week went wrong on Tuesday! On Tuesday, the almost beginning of the week…

Kammie had to go to the Emergency Room because she took a really bad fall due to sweaty sock feet and slippery concrete. Yes, not my greatest ‘Mommy’ moment. Lesson has been learned and filed away for future referencing.

We started out going to Urgent First Care because I was sure she was just badly bruised. I did an assessment before I let her move and after she hobbled home I took note of reflexes and everything else. Hey, this nurse training comes in handy with kidlets! So, with my notes in hand we headed to Urgent Care. The treating physician took four series of xrays and flipped out because he ‘found’ a hairline pelvis fracture. I stood staring at the xrays for what seemed like an eternity, I didn’t see what he saw. He wanted to send us to the Emergency Room on the other side of town via ambulance. I politely told him that we could get her there in one piece and headed there with his orders.

We arrived at the ER at 5 o’clock. We didn’t leave until 10:30, that should give you a good idea about how this didn’t go over well. They took more xrays and decided there wasn’t anything wrong with her. She wasn’t even bruised. Dr. S, the treating physician, was a complete and total jerk. They didn’t do a neuro eval, they didn’t listen to Kammie when she told them about a circle of pain. He dismissed that as being from having to wait too long to be seen. So, my Mama Bear comes out in me. I tear him a new blowhole and am furious. Okay fine, we get home and I stew about it. Baby girl cannot sleep because she is so uncomfortable. I talked to a few online friends , and one of them said that it sounded like time to go the Children’s Hospital. (Thanks Katie! )

You guessed it, we head off for children’s hospital the next day. A two hour drive to Atlanta, $70 worth of gas and a migraine later, we arrive. I love CHOA! Within five minutes of arriving, we are triaged and called back! Within five more minutes the Nurse Practitioner comes in and checks Kammers out. The NP did a wonderfully thorough job, leaving me in awe. She did all her evaluations, in great detail I might add, in a ten minute time frame. She said that she could tell by palpating that the coccyx was broken, an xray would confirm, and there was no pelvis fracture to be noted which an xray would confirm as well. Five minutes later they took us out to Xray, where they were done in a flash. The NP came in and told us that the coccyx is indeed broken, and that there is definitely not a pelvic fracture. Relief!

Then came the bad news, the coccyx will take awhile to heal. After all, they can’t set this bone. LOL So for the next 6 weeks, Kammie isn’t going to be all too happy or comfortable. Motrin will help control the swelling and pain.

That was my week.

How was yours?????

I am telling you the survey is erroneous! There is no way it is right. Don’t take my comments the wrong way, while I would love this to be accurate, it most certainly is not.