It happened so quickly...I almost didn't notice

Yesterday, the kids went to their friend's house. Both of the kids.

After a short moment of childless panic, I collected myself, called Brian and asked him to join me at the grocery store. It was date-ish. In fact, it was so enjoyable (and we had another half hour to kill before I had to pick up the children) that we continued our childless adventure in Wal-Mart.

We bought glasses. Real ones. Not dollar-store-replacements-so-everyone-has-a-contained-beverage-at-dinner glasses. Lovely, large, heavy, actual matching glasses. So many, in fact, that we can have company!

The glasses look lovely in the cupboard. They fit nicely in the hand. The one twinge of regret that bears mentioning is that the children's colourful plastic plates and bowls - Perfect For Snacks - have been removed to make room.

These plates and bowls came with little colourful plastic glasses and matching utensils. A la Ikea. The kids learned to cut their food with the little plastic knives. The ever-famous, lunch-time favorite 'snack plate' was specifically designed to be served on these little dishes. Over the years, we've passed on the colourful cups. We've passed on the colourful utensils. But I had managed to find uses for the plates and bowls.

The need is great for glasses. Real ones. Brian's mom is going to (laugh) be so impressed. But it means that the little kiddie plates and bowls are going to be passed on so the glasses fit nicely in the cupboard. We can do this. One more goodbye to the carefree days of crayons and Play-Doh, sippy cups and board books, Dora and naps.

Raiden is trying out his dry morning cereal in a 'real' bowl this morning. He reached for the colourful stack of bowls in their usual spot - and froze. Change is hard. He'll try the 'big bowl' this morning and let me know how it goes....

Friday Fun Day...and other tidbits...

We enjoyed a great day at our friends' house on Friday. Food, fun, friendship and fund-shedding...how can you go wrong with a day like that?!

The kids had a blast on the sledding hill - directly in the afore mentioned friends' backyard. Ok, well...the backyard gate opens onto the hill. There was the clear-sailing type of sledding until 4 classes from the local public school showed up. In their organizational process (let one adult herd 30 children - in snow gear with sleds - across a parking lot and to the top of the hill) they managed to shuffle the 7 kids in our crowd over to the more hazard-strewn-yet-more-fun-because-of-the-trees/rock/creek sledding run. As long as the kids went down one at a time, there were no problems. And it turns out the creek was very frozen...good news for the Ski-Doo Tube that landed on the ice. Raiden managed to execute a quick-eject in classic Indiana Jones style onto the creek bank. It was exciting enough to send not one, not two, but three of the 5 teachers running over. I wasn't that worried...I had instructed Raiden in the proper bail-out procedures before he executed the stunt. But geez...3 running teachers can certainly make you question your parental supervision abilities...

I shed a little more than $100 at Fun Day. Another local homeschooling mom is an Usborne Books consultant. I am waiting anxiously for the books I ordered to arrive. I'll finally be able to explain Science to my kids! Wheeee!!! I'll throw a picture up when they arrive. I love new books.


Let's see...what else did we manage to accomplish this week? Don't get excited...not very much schoolish happened. Mom and Dad are away so the kids and I went out to the house and painted the new drywall in the kitchen. Actually, I painted and refereed. They ate on the newly finished hardwood floor and sock-skated and maintained a low-level of dissonance between themselves. Just enough to make it take 3.5 hours to cover one short wall in paint. I returned to the kitchen Saturday morning sans offspring to finish up the pail of paint. Kitchen is not totally done yet. Mom and Dad return tomorrow. The cabinets are supposed to arrive with them. That means the kitchen needs to have the painting finished asap. I'll offer to help this week. It won't take long. I managed to cut in all the corners and edges and window sills. Rolling is all that is required on 1.5 short walls. And, of course, a top coat.

Kori and I have planned and begun a small quilting project. I had planned to complete it by hand. Since we have started cutting pieces, I am seriously considering assembling pieces with mom's sewing machine. Pics to follow once the project is completed.

I am planning and preparing for the arrival of our new Saxon math books. We are still reading and enjoying C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair. We've been listing to a few selection from Handel. I recommend The Arrival of The Queen of Sheeba. The listening accompanied our reading of the first chapter of Why Handel Waggled His Wig. An awesome resource for music appreciation for ungrateful, rowdy, heathen beasts...I mean children. It's funny and interesting. Not dry. Brian so very nicely installed two language learning resources for us on the PC. We now have unhampered access to French (necessary in my mind) and German. I'm looking forward to using those with the kids.

Lesson planning is on the schedule for me this evening...and I'm signing off now to get to it.

The Good Ol' Hockey Game

Before I forget what happened, I figured I should tell you about the great game we all got to go see with Raiden.

His Urologist gave him 4 box seat tickets to the Sens vs. Leafs game. The game was on February 3, the day after his tests. Rai's eyes just kept getting bigger and bigger...he was suddenly feeling better and better as Dr. Leonard explained to him how game night would go.

The deal was this: Wade Redden, player for the Sens, bought a box at the arena the first year of his contract. He gives the tickets to CHEO to distribute to the kids, who get to enjoy rock-star treatment at the game. He calls the box 'Wade's World'. What a great thing to do for kids. Sometimes it takes a pretty amazing event to forget about the stress of being sick, surgeries, tests, treatments. This is just the thing. The box Hostess brings the kids rinkside to watch the players warm up. There's snacks and drinks in the box. The kids get special visitors like Sparticat the mascott. They get Wade Redden tee shirts.

Kori and Rai saw Ron MacLean during their rinkside visit. Somehow, they charmed him into a quick pre-game interview and autographs. The game itself was amazing. It went through overtime into shoot-out. There was a huge delegation of Toronto fans rivaling the noise the home-town Sens fan could make. It was a great night.

Ok, as daily life is calling...I will leave this post as is so that you all understand I am still alive and blogging...just busy. I will get back and add a bit of detail (Rai and I decided on our trip home from the hospital to surprise Brian and not tell him about the tickets until we got home) and pictures.

A Week Ago Today.

It's been a week since our trip to CHEO for Rai's renal scan. The short story is that his kidneys are in much better shape than the Urologist had guessed. He had guessed that his weak kidney was functioning at 8 - 20%. In fact, it seems it is up around 43%. Considering kidneys only function at 50% maximum anyway, this is great news.

So, we will be going back to CHEO in April for more tests. There is something going on - perhaps an intermittent blockage (really tricky to track down, apparently) - and the next round of tests are to rule out a few conditions that could be presenting UPJ Obstruction symptoms.

Our day of testing last Friday was very tough for Raiden. The IV was put in his elbow instead of his hand. The first attempt didn't work so they had to do a second insertion. He was not impressed and nearly everyone on the 6th floor heard about it. After his scan, he was so overstimulated, exhausted, stressed and overwhelmed that he had to sleep for a bit. The nurses were quite concerned as he had not eaten in about 15 hours. He was feeling nauseous and had a killer headache. The nurses ordered some lunch for him. Raiden was so fed up with everything that I ate half his jello, drank half his juice and we left the ward to go and find the Urologist for the test results. There we found out that his awful feelings after the scan were from the Lasix. As soon as he had a rest and some salty pretzels, he was fine.

In the car on the way home he was chatting with me. He says the scan wasn't too bad - now that he had time to think about it and it was over. But it was pretty dreadful (yes, he said 'dreadful') while he was doing it. And he's 'not going to let anyone do another needle in him for at least a whole year. Two needles in one guy is enough for anyone for a whole year, Mom!'


It's really dark at 6am. Who knew?!

Arriving at the Medical Day Unit...and checking out the first of 214 new hockey cards that will (hopefully!) get us through the day.

With our Child Life Specialist 'Leigh' before the 'needle' and after, back in the Play Room.

Under the camera...absolutely still for one whole hour.

Sleeping it off under warm sheets. A very cool feature of the hospital.

An elevator pic for his sister.

Waiting in the Urology Clinic. We should have carried his file down with us!

Good as new now that we're home!

Pizza's salty, right? First meal in 24hrs.

Today We Went To Ur

Today is History and Geography day. The globe is out and it follows us from the couch - where we do our reading aloud - to the computer - where we look at pictures.

This is Sargon. We read about how he rose to power, overthrew the king of his city-state in Sumer and went on to conquer all the other city-states in the land of Sumer. Which is southern Mesopotamia. Which is modern day Iraq. We learned how he was the first known military dictator. He named the first Empire, which included all those conquered city-states: The Akkadian Empire.

Fast forward a few thousand years and we read how Leonard Woolley spearheaded the excavation of the city of Ur, one of the city-states of Sumer.

Kori is so excited to know another famous archaeologist. The nitty-gritties and many more pictures are found at this link: The Royal Tombs of Ur After reading the story of the excavation of Ur, we went on to play the game of 20 squares. Very popular with the kids. We had to finish up quickly as we had to get Brian at work but the kids were talking about making our own game of 20 squares. I have to admit, it would be nicer to play on a real game board than just using the mouse to point and click our way through the game.

We will have a day #2 in Sumer as I was reminded by the children that we didn't have time to colour a map. So tomorrow, while we are out getting the car fixed (don't ask), I will stop at Staples to photocopy maps and colouring pages.