One sick puppy...

A week and a half ago our 12 1/2 year old Boston Terrier became extremely sick. We rushed her to the vet and he wasn't sure she'd make it past six hours. Thankfully, she is still with us and in good spirits. She's still terribly swollen in her face and front extremities which the veterinarian attributes to her Hashimoto's Disease.
She also suffers from congestive heart failure and is recovering from anemia.

Molly looking great on day two of her five day hospital stay, not much swelling at all! Here she is sporting a flower bracelet C8 made.

 C8 has been such a wonderful helper. She is in charge of filling Molly's AM and PM medication box (with my help) and dividing her low sodium food into the proper portions for four times a day feedings. She's an excellent, dependable nurse to Molly. The boys help with feeding and taking her to out to potty frequently. It's good to see the kids working together to keep our sweet girl as healthy as we can. We practice listening to Molly's heart and lung sounds each day, too.

 I had already been thinking about studying the human body this year in science. With all that's happened with Molly, we certainly will and have already dabbled a little bit in heart, lungs, thyroid and bone marrow function. I have two wonderful friends offering some of their body systems and anatomy materials for us to borrow! I am so thankful for our friends!

I've been pondering about the coming school year. We usually begin the next weekday after July 4th, which will be Thursday, July 5th this year. This puts us finishing our 180 school days around the first of April. (We learn year round, but this is our record keeping beginning and end date.) Right now while it's so hot during the day, why not spend the time we are indoors doing school. At least that's been my train of thought for the past 3 years. So, I'm in the process of finishing up our rough outline for PK-4, 1st and 3rd. I already have our ancient history core items gathered. I'm going to pull lessons from Mystery of History Vol. 1, Story of the World Vol. 1, and A Child's History of the World. I'm just working on fine tuning the rest of our subjects. We are going to have another super fun and field trip filled year!

~Hope

And here's a picture from today - our first day of VBS. I help in J4's class and will lead the Bible lesson for 2's, 3's, 4's and 5's as one group each day! I love little ones! =)

A Busy Little Bee....

A few nature highlights from today....

 

A tiny bee gathering pollen ~ the sunflower was such a great background to observe this busy little guy. The bright yellow pollen sticking to his body and legs was easily seen ~ especially after coming inside and zooming the digital image on the computer. Our camera is a nice complement to our nature studies. It serves as a magnifying glass of sorts. The pollen grains were not visible to the naked eye. 

Here's our little guy climbing on one of the petals. We think he's cute!

Another of J4's Mammoth Sunflowers ~ now to wait until the seeds are ripe!

Our bluebirds will soon be the proud and responsible parents of four new little ones! ~ They took over the chickadee nest-box not even 24 hours after the chickadee nestlings fledged! At least we still see our little black and white friends at the feeder...

This is just funny to me: a shoe??...a shield?? Anyway, inside this little birdhouse is a mommy sparrow incubating four tiny little eggs. Apparently, she doesn't mind being on the edge of the kids fort.

And finally, C8's new little friend, Mr. Roly Poly

~Hope

Helen, GA field trip!

We began last Wednesday with a family trip to Helen, Ga to tube the river with homeschooling friends. J4 and I were the last to go in the river. As we were about to step in J4 yelled, "Look, Mommy, a snake!". Ugh...I've seen more snakes these past two months than in my entire life combined. And they've all been in the water. It was a long, skinny snake, and once it swam a bit past where we were to jump in, J4 and I went for it...sorta had to because we were the last ones on the bank!
Even with a rocky start, we had so much fun ~ especially after we learned what those 'straps' were for. Their purpose was to hook our floats together! About half the river trip was spent trying to catch up with each other so that we could hook our tubes~but that was fun, too! 

R6 was our captain and what a great one he was~dodging the rocks, etc! And, once we were all chained together it was easy for me to sit back and relax. Definitely a day to remember!

 We were starving once our tubing trip was over and chose a restaurant we'd eaten at before with my dad a few years earlier. Isn't the view lovely.

After eating, we needed to kill a couple of more hours. We were planning to meet some family members on  441 and drive up to the Tennessee mountains with them. We decided to go to the Bear Park just down from the restaurant since we'd studied bears earlier in the year using  Apologia: Land Animals of the Sixth Day.

The bears were playful and seemed happy in their habitats. They had pretty big swimming pools and climbing structures. One bear in particular (bottom right) would wave his paw to us and open his mouth. It was obvious what he wanted. We give him extra apple slices. We decided bears are pretty smart creatures.

Here's a short video of one playing in the water. Turn your volume down!



And then we headed out to Highway 441, our destination a 5 day trip to the Great Smokey Mountains with 27 sweet as can be family members!


~Hope

While in Tennessee, we saw a wild black bear roaming in the meadow at Cades Cove! I'll try to post about that trip in the next couple of days!!