Hemotology results back in. I'm cured! -read bottom of this entry for more on that.

Since my last update, I've had toothpaste on my bathroom scale, and I mean about 1/4 a tube of it spread evenly:) Lipstick on my wall, that may be a repeat, a spider bite on Silas' leg, which as a side note I've found out if you shred a red potato, skin on and pack in on an infected site, works for blood poisoning and streaking too, it pulls the poison out. So I seran wrapped Silas' leg the next night to keep the potato shreds in place. They stayed neatly in place all night(next to the wound, not on it, argh, but it did help). Silas also got a burn on his arm, looks like a frying pan mark, sounds bad, the idea of it is worse than the burn. Lawrence doesn't remember any incident, and I don't either, so that's even scarier. The only good thing about burns is they are great teachers about listening and staying back when told "This is hot, stay back". Poor guy.

OK that's all for now. The blood from falls ranks at honorable mention.

Home school is going well, though I thought I was quite clever getting a tape player for Caleb and Malachi to go listen to books on tape somewhere to increase quiet in the house and education. Well, our lovely 2 year old has un-strung 2 audio tapes and 1 video tape from the library, quite possibly making this one of our more expensive memberships. As of now, tapes are no longer allowed in any way shape or form from the library. I am planning to get a microphone and read books myself, that way, if Silas ruins them, it will be frustrating, but not as expensive. We are working on the anti-2 year-old-defense-system, but have not perfected it yet.

So for the curious amongst you, I have been settling into homeschooling, gaining my own philosophy and style. For someone like myself, this had to happen. Me not having an opinion is like a fish living out of water. Although, opinion is not really accurate. I have been learning about finding what works for me and each kid as I go without expecting this is best for everyone, and this, my friends is new and fabulous.

I loosely subscribe to classical education as follows:

Classical Education is based on 3 stages of learning, the first stage is the Grammar Stage when you input facts into the sponge AKA child. This stage is K-4th grade. The other 2 stages aren't important to me yet, so I can't remember them. With classical education, most subjects are taught by reading, reading, reading relevant material. History taught by historically accurate fiction, or non-fiction in story format as much as possible(at this point anyhow). Math, not done by reading:) Writing, we are doing Sing, Spell Read and Write, although we are at an impasse at this point and have wandered into working at our own pace on vocabulary for a while. Caleb's handwriting has improved considerably since last year, although, writing is far from his favorite thing to do.

We will be doing science with a few friends, and will be doing Mandarin with another friend. I'm looking forward to leading science but will not be teaching any Mandarin, shock and amazement, I know.

We are learning a memory verse a week, reading Emigmeyers Bible daily, read alouds (what ever books they choose from a bin I have set out). Doing math, vocabulary, which means I sound out a word ie. mmmmm aaaaaa nnnnnnn. Caleb/Malachi figure out the word and write it down. They know the phonics, so write the sounds. I write it down and then compare, making corrections. Ok, that may be interesting to 1 of you, so enough tedium.

I'm tired, and just realized I never mentioned the results of my hemotology appt. For any of you who made it this far.......... I'm healed!! That's what the Oncologist said after 4 hours of wating around. I took a blood test when I arrived for my 1230p appt. After that I waited for hours.......then my blood results came back normal, my white cell counts back to normal. Must have been off due to Castlemans, which was cured when they removed the lymph node 'tumor'. Not enough research on Castlemans, so who's to know, but seems to be the case for me. No, they don't want to use me as a study case, too few people to make it worth studying.

Congratulations if you made it to the end of this entry. This serves as 2 weeks worth!