Neuro Reorganization Update

We are in week seven of our neuro reorganization journey. The kids are getting a lot of therapy done each day without complaint.

I fall short on the amount of sensory stimulation I need to do with each of them, and am brainstorming ways to accomplish more (like having the dog help oversee patterns). The challenge is that sensory stimulation can't be done at once, it must be done throughout the day, or at least with blocks of time between each "session."

I found the book, What To Do About Your Brain Injured Child, quite helpful in understanding the methodology behind the various activities.

Hanna Update - bad news

Children's Heaven was broken into, and the laptops stolen, and the desktop vandalized. All of Hanna's records are gone. I will post updates as I receive them.

Arriving in Style

Subtitle: Does this mean we're rednecks?


If your wife was up the street hiding eggs in a park, and you had to take three kids to meet her when she called, how would you get there?

Another day at the office

Shooting during a forty minute flight on a B 25 bomber was no shabby job. It was especially meaningful to me because my aunt Eleanor (Mary Martin) flew these planes in WWII.


I was priveleged last night to shoot an interview with a Doolittle Raider, who was captured by the Japanese following the raid. I'll post the interview soon, or you can view it at The State newspaper's site.

Junior Master Gardener

I love that the kids are involved with 4-H. Specifically, the Junior Master Gardener program at Riverbanks Zoo and Garden. Sarah is always a week ahead on her assignments, but Alden and I struggle to keep up with his homework, and are generally up late getting it done - and still manage to stay about a week behind. Tonight (around 10pm), he and Zion worked together on an assignment that was right up his alley.

Edible bugs.

The idea was to show the symetrical nature of bugs. Did you know that bugs on earth, if gathered into a pile, would weigh MUCH more than all the people on earth?

Alden loves arranging his food into visual masterpieces anyway, so this was pure bliss. And, I managed to get Zion to eat peanut butter! Guess it helped that we forgot to eat dinner, so maybe she was just really hungry.

Before you think I'm a horrible mom to forget dinner, we ate lunch at 4pm. I wanted to try and cook Indian food from scratch, and it just took longer than I expected for the frozen sour cream to thaw.

Sarah said it wasn't bad, but it wasn't like the food we had in India, either. I think the rice was not dry enough and it could use just a bit more spice. The instructions were all in metric weights, like "soak 110 grams of black lentils and 30 grams of kidney beans, add 120 grams of tomato puree." So, I just guessed on most of it. Here they are, praying it will be edible.

Seedlings

One of my new hobbies, besides selling wigs on ebay to raise money for the adoption, is gardening. I started it when I realized the kids haven't had the experiences I did growing up with a mom with green thumbs, fingers and toes, who knows all the scientific names of every plant and has grown food organically since before I was born. I tried last year, and as you may recall, the garden was almost a complete failure. This year, I decided to start inside, with tomato seeds.

The only issue now is that I'm scared to take them outside. So, they are sortof past the "seedling" stage.


Ruth brought me some tulips from the Netherlands when she visited a few weeks ago. I though they seemed very odd when they began to poke out of the dirt, and now I realize why. I have this great crop of mushrooms in the tulip pot. Go figure. Need to find out if they are edible then cook um up!

Eggs, in color

There is no end to my friend Lori Cook's creativity. This week it was dying eggs, but with stuff we had around the house, like wine and red onions, tumaric and yellow onions, tea and coffee (tea works better) and spinach (needed some food color).

Workouts

Exciting meet for Sarah this past weekend. State meet, so the competition was really tough, but she did very well and we're super proud of her.

Alden is preparing for his new rank test at the karate dojo, and practicing with his sword, called a bokken.




Zion stays busy with a combination of gymnastics, karate and running like a crazy person.

Homeschool . . . or child labor?

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. This is Sarah, entering transactions into Quicken. April 15 is a mere week away, so David is pulling in all the help he can recruit.

Wade's New Film

So, Wade has been hard at work constructing a rooftop in the studio at George Fulton's place, where he has his new office.

My lighting class lit it and then Wade wanted to try it out, so he made this short, which is worth watching, especially if you like Mr. Softie.

If you think it's funny, hit the funny meter!

Thanks to Van Kornegay from USC for this photo.