Whatta Weekend!

What a weekend! (The photo is just a goofy, crazy webcam pic of me and the three kids!!!)

We started off Friday night with a fun tail-gate party (complimetns of our subdivision's owner - Brighton Corp.) at our Subdivision's brand new high school's FIRST football game! They are the Rocky Mountain Grizzlies! And.... of course, being their first game ever, and having mostly starters who haven't played in high school yet.... they lost :-( 6-21! But it was still FUN! Supporting our neighborhoods football team is a very popular thing here! There must have been almost 5000 people there... 

Saturday morning, the kids and I woke up fairly early and headed off to day camp with my parents who were in Three Island Crossing State Park camping for the weekend with their friends Jeff & Debbie and Bud & Donna. Jeff & Debbie's daughter in law, and my friend, Tracey came on Saturday too with her two girls and their friend. We had so much fun! The boys, of course, headed off to go FISHING with Pappie, Bud and Jeff, the moment we arrived at camp. Ethan and Jimmy could fish all day, if we let them... which we don't! Too many other fun things to do! My dad, "Pappie", sure got his fishing buddies with these two grandsons!!! They are like three peas in a pod. :-) Jimmy brought back a Perch and Ethan  brought a Bass, which Bud and Pappie BBQ'd up with our dinner that night...

My mom, "Grammie", Angel and I decided to head off on the bikes while the guys were gone. We found a really cool history museum focused on the Three Island Crossings here in Idaho. We later brought everyone else there for a visit, which was perfect for Ethan and Tracey's daughter, Roxy who are both studying Idaho history this year in school.  We all went biking, hiking, sat by the campfire, played croquet and cards, saw some deer and a fox and just "hung out" all day long. Jimmy, Angel and I left Ethan with Pappie and Grammie for the night and left for the hour and a half drive home around 9:30p.m. after an exhausting, FUN day. Poor Devon was left at home finishing a boring old side job :-(

Sunday, of course, we were off and running by 8:30 a.m. ready to open up for Sunday School. Jimmy and Angel were still so tired, but they did it and got ready and even brushed their teeth and combed their hair!!! It was a good Sunday with friends, relaxing and playing with Buddy (our extra cute doggie). Overall, Sunday was a nice finish to a great pre-fall weekend... it's going to be getting much colder over the next few weeks!

Look forward to my next post about our First (and ONLY) apple from our tree!!!!!

Random Thoughts...

     Just some random thoughts as my tired brain tries to think this afternoon. I am thinking about taking a nap! WOW! I never take naps, always too busy or feel guilty. Today, I am STILL getting over that summer cold and I think I will have to take one or I may not make it til' the end of the day. We have an "end of summer" BBQ at a neighbor's house in the early evening tonight. I am keeping our contribution simple, just corn on the cob and chocolate chip cookies. I still don't have the energy to make something more elaborate, and I don't even feel bad about it! 

     Anyways, this morning we went to church, like always. We are in need of a 4 year olds - kindergarten teacher in our Children's Ministry right now so I had to teach this morning. A couple of weeks ago when I filled in, we only had two kids... this morning, there were 14 little guys!!!! They were great! I was so blessed... 

     Devon and I don't always get to teach the kids because we have so many other things we are trying to do on Sunday mornings, so it may be hectic when I have to teach, but it's really fun, too. It makes me realize the effort and time our Sunday School teachers put in.

     Since we (Devon and I) are the directors of Children's Ministry, we are always having to find good, reliable teachers for sunday morning. We had put a notice in the bulletin for a few weeks now and I almost closed the class this morning to get the point across to our congregation, but God always knows best. God knew this particular class was going to be larger than normal and that they needed to hear His word. He also knew that a particular mom would come to my mind as a great teacher when I saw her pick up her son. So, I approached the mom, an acquaintance of mine, and asked if she had ever thought about teaching sunday school. She was very excited and eager to help and so.... because we listened to the Lord this morning and kept the class open with me teaching, we also got our teacher!!!! Now I have to pray that I will remember to call her this week to fill her in with all the details and what teaching entails :-) God is good!

      I guess thats all I have the energy to write right now, so I will say good-bye....

The Fletcher Kids and their thoughts on "animals passing away"...

These are my three wonderful blessings. I just thought I would post some recent photos of them. I have some really cute ones of all three of them, but these are the most recently uploaded from my camera... they were taken in late July. Jimmy is my oldest (he's the blonde) and is almost 11, Ethan is with him and he is my middle and is 9 and Angel in the photo alone is my youngest and she is 7!

Anyways, today was an inservice day at school, so we were all off school today! Hooray... although it did mess up the kids sense of routine so quickly after school beginning, but it was still nice to have a day off while it is still warm outside!

When we returned from doing a few errands and getting our last shaved ice treat of summer, daddy was home already. The kids were checking out our fish (they like to just sit and watch them sometimes). We have a sucker fish whose name I can't remember because we all just call him "Sucker", one beautiful betta fish that we call "Sully" because he has the coloring of Sully on Monsters, Inc., five cute little tiny blue fish that we nicknamed "The Fletcher Five" and of course the kids seem to know which fish "resembles" them and is theirs, as well as two (well, now one...) orange guppy fish named Marlin and Nemo (for Finding Nemo movie). After a few minutes, Ethan noticed that one of them (Nemo) were not moving and seemed stuck under the rock (the fish had been acting a bit strange the past few days...)  :-(

The kids all jumped up to come and get me and dad to see if "Nemo" was okay. I got there first and could see that Nemo had already passed away. I told the kids that Nemo was swimming in Heaven with Jesus now and we needed to "bury" (flush) him. They were all very sad and Angel was already crying, as we held our quick little memorial service for him. They all said a quick memory of the little fish (including Devon (dad)) and then we prayed for him to be happy in heaven and told Angel that we'd see him someday again. Then we flushed Nemo. Angel was sobbing now and Jimmy had run upstairs to cry. Ethan seemed to be the only one holding it together and tried to reassure everyone that is was o.k. 

Still sad, we all got in the car to go to our local Boise Hawks baseball game for the night. When we arrived, we were told that the seats we could redeem for our vouchers were sold out! This just bummed the kids out even more, so we decided to make a detour to PetSmart. The kids picked out two more orange guppy fish to add to the tank and found one that was close enough to call "Nemo 2" and named the other one "Coral" after Nemo's mom on the movie... 

The fish did great in the tank when we introduced them and the three orange guppy fish are swirling all around each other. And, the most important part is that the kids are all happy, too! 

It's amazing that the small stuff in life can teach children so much about really living. 

My kids have a friend who is going through the loss of a grandpa (due to cancer) and they are sad because their friend hasn't been able to play much due to visiting him in another state for most of the summer.  We tried to relate some of the feelings from today and put them into bigger real life issues to help them be able to empathize with their friend in a small way when he returns. I pray that God will use these little things continuously in their lives to teach them and prepare them for when the bigger things happen.

Homeschooling Jimmy...

Hello All...
I had totally forgotten about this blog that I had set up over a year and a half ago!!!!! I had been wanting to post a blog and so went looking for a blog site and found my own :-0 I will try to post on here more often than ONCE!
I am homeschooling my oldest son Jimmy this year and so I want to journal my experiences... this seems the easiest way to get it all down, since I am on the computer so often. Jimmy (or J.C. as he now wants to be called?!?!?) is almost 11 and next year will be going to middle school. Elementary school now days is hard enough for special needs children or any child who is a bit different... so I decided I wanted to help my son catch up academically and maybe teach him some better social skills before I handed him over to the wolves who are in middle school. Not everyone has been on board with our family's decision, but God is and that is what matters.
We've been homeschooling for one week now, and we've already seen some frustration and long hours. I know Jimmy wants to homeschool, he has said so himself, but we will still have to see if the outcome will be worth all of it. It is nice to be able to spend time with him alone, too. We have a few field trip planned to go along with our lessons... as well as some social outings to brush up on those skills. I am blessed to have the support of my husband, parents and brother and sister in law here to help me, as well as the Virtual Academy's teacher and special ed teacher and our PSR, Rachel. These are the people who know how badly I need a break here and there, and how badly Jimmy needs a break from me!
I've already learned that my son did not get all he was supposed to get out of public school... no big surprise! Writing (Printing) has always been the highest frustration point for Jimmy. He has never printed well, you can barely read his writing... and it is never over a sentence or two. I am proud to be able to say, that after only a few lessons, he is beginning to cursive write WAY better than print!!! On our curricula, it states that children who have an extra hard time printing (i.e. Jimmy), should start being taught to cursive write in the middle to end of second grade to give them a head start! I sure wish we would've done this with Jimmy. He actually likes to make his letters flow. It seems to take less time to form the words and he is not picking up his pencil to make the next letter. We have also always had a hard time with spacing between words! Well, cursive makes it easier to see when the word ends and to make appropriate spaces for the beginning of the next word. It has been a patience tester for me to teach him cursive, since NONE of his public school teachers/helpers/special ed/etc. have even TRIED to do this with jimmy. Maybe if they would've taken a bit more time teaching him rather than focusing on all the "bad behavior", he would've received positive praise and done better, but who knows??? I know. Even last year in the special behavior class he was in, he did WAY better than ever before, because they focused on the positive! He was in a regular class over 80% of the day!!! That's compared to 20% before going into that program. The only bummer part is that he just can't seem to learn enough in a large classroom environment.
Our psychiatrist appointment was today too..... it was also a blessing! He doesn't have to see her again for 6 weeks!!! YEAH!!! We were seeing her every 3 weeks for awhile... so this is a great thing! I am so thankful to the Lord for the changes He's done in Jimmy. A little over a year ago, I would've never even posted a positive blog about Jimmy... it probably would have been full of woes and sad tales, true, but still sad. I can't believe how much he's grown, both physically, spiritually and emotionally.
I know that Jimmy's life will continue to be difficult for him, but I hope to be able to bring some of his self esteem back to him. He thinks he is stupid and dumb, really he is very smart. Just not able to put down his thoughts onto paper. I know he will probably always need to be medicated, but I pray that he will know how much he is loved!
Well, thanks for reading my long blog... I guess I just needed to vent and get some thoughts down tonight. It's been a long, good week, but I have been sick with a summer cold for a few days, so I think I'll call it a night.
Good night and Sleep Tight! God Bless....