Hospitals are not fun!

What's up with a hospital not having wireless? I couldn't believe they didn't have wireless.

I've been sick for a while and it has just been getting worse and not better. I'll back up and tell the whole story.

Back in February - April of 08 Elijah was sick and in the hospital twice during that time. One morning I woke up with a raw red itchy place on my arm. It was SO itchy and it burned with pain.
I went to the dermatologist and he said it was contact dermatitis and gave me some cream. It didn't really get better, but it was tolerable. Before I knew it I had it on the other arm and on my leg. I went back to the dermatologist and and he gave me a new cream to put in it.

By early 09 I had this on both arms and legs and on my sides. I was miserable and itchy. I went to the dermatologist in February and March. At the end of March it was really bad. I told the dermatologist how miserable I was. He put me on Prednisone and it really helped. Things calmed down and I felt much better. Once I finished the Prednisone it all came back and even worse.

Over the summer I went to the dermatologist ever two weeks. I stayed on Prednisone and each time I'd finish a round the rash would get worse. I even visited a different doctor and didn't get any answers. I was miserable and couldn't function to do things I needed to do everyday.

I've been on every med there is for itching and non have helped. Most seem to make it worse. I had an allergic reaction to Neurontin and that was really bad. The dermatologist kept saying it was an allergy in my skin and there was nothing that could be done about it. I just couldn't accept that. Something had to be done because I couldn't live like this.

A friend's husband works at a hospital so she asked him to talk to a doctor and see if he would see me. The doctor agreed to see me and once he did he thought I had a staph infection. He told me I needed to be in the hospital and plan to be there for two weeks.

Once I was at the hospital they did all kinds of blood work and even took 3 skin biopsies. They determined I did not have staph, I have asthma skin. There is no cure for asthma skin.
So now I'm home, itchy and miserable. I did get a new ointment from this doctor, but it has not helped yet.

Please pray I get some relief. I can not live like this.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my Sweetheart!

Today was Jody's birthday! 41 He is gettin old!

He slept most of today since he worked graveyard last night. When he got up we told him to pick any restaurant. He picked Lone Star Steakhouse. After we ate Dakota and I ran in Wal-Mart and got him a cheese cake. Yummy!

Not too much excitement, he is 41 after all, gotta go easy on that heart!

Table Time

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Table Time and said I would make a post about it soon and now here it is.

I believe TT is the most important part of our homeschool day. If we don't do anything else I want to have TT. I have Dakota to join us just because this will be my last year to homeschool him. It's a fun time anyway and we usually end up laughing at some silly something and having a good time.

Basically TT is where we meet at the dinning table and work on skills and do a few things together before we head off to do our school work. I tried to snap a few pictures from two different days to show what we do at TT.

This is Elijah giving me a strange look for snapping a picture. You can see the days of the week cards laid out and he is looking at his calendar notebook. We go over the days of the week and months of year. We are working on learning to spell them. Plus I like to play little mind games such as If this is September what was two months ago? I always ask Elijah questions first and if he doesn't know then Dakota can answer.


This is Elijah's calendar notebook.

Here Elijah is filling in the dates for August.


I have a page in his calendar notebook for him to fill in each day that we do school. We have never done this before so I think we should plan for a party or some special trip when we hit 100! I haven't told Elijah that yet. Maybe I'll tell him tomorrow.

Because of sickness we just completed day 4 today!



This is a picture of some history trivia cards that we go over during TT. We are doing history for this week and maybe next. Okay... when I get tired of these cards I will swap them out for some science trivia or something else. These cards have really great questions. Elijah has first chance to answer and if he doesn't know the answer Dakota can take a shot at it. Dakota and I are both shocked at some of the answers Elijah does knows.


These are some Abeka flash cards. I went through them and picked out a handful that we go over each day. Elijah has learned the answer to almost all of them in just a few days. Next week I'll change out to a different set, but I will pull this set back out later on to see if he still remembers the answers. I will say that Dakota has learned that 1 mile = 5,280 feet and 1 mile = 1,760 yards.
That's good information to know!!!

This is our Bible verse card. You can see an example of this on the left side bar of my blog. These are really neat. You flip and fold the card as you read the verse. Once both boys know the verse I'll pull out a new verse card. Dakota already knows the verse and Elijah just about has it.


Here is Elijah filling in some more dates for August.

We finally got to September.


I really enjoy us having TT. It is a fast fun time and it's amazing what kids can learn in just a few minutes a day. Next week I'm going to add in some math flash cards.

More of Dakota's Photography

Dakota's Photography

Here are some layouts Dakota did with some pictures he took of Elijah last week.

I can't decide which set I like best.

Dakota - Working

I thought I'd share a picture of how Dakota spends a lot of time.

Dakota has been busy working on our homeschool website.
http://www.nelcha.org/

In the picture above he has 3 screens hooked up to one computer so he can see three pages at the same time. It's really cool how you can scroll the one mouse from screen to screen.

People would really not believe the insane amount of hours Dakota puts into working on this website. Co-op is starting up so there's a lot of extra work in the fall and also in the spring when we plan for the next school year. Once he gets over this hump he'll only have the newsletter each month and that won't be bad at all. It only gets hairy when everything is due at once.

So now you have a peek into Dakota's world.

Family Day

Today is Jody's day off so we headed out to have family day. All three of the guys enjoy taking pictures so that is what we set off to do. I didn't take any pictures so I'm sharing pictures Elijah took. I hope to share some from Jody and Dakota later.

This is an old train track that crosses over the Ouachita River. My mom tells stories of walking across this train bridge when she was a little girl.


They guys seem to love to take water pictures.

Elijah snapped this picture of Dakota in the van.



It's always interesting to see what Elijah took pictures of. You never know what he'll get.




We had a fun day. They guys took some pictures and we had lunch out, a trip to Hobby Lobby and got a snow cone on the way home.