our lawn joke

My hubby was joking about our neighbor who is very diligent about mowing his lawn...(he was out mowing:). I am the one who usually always mows our yard, I like to. I told him that I was growing it long for the bunnies who frequent our yard to eat. He said, "How nice...what a animal lover you are". In truth, I just haven't taken the time...but thought it was a nice gesture to the bunnies to grow it long:)

Here's a little bit about us...

My husband and I met at a high school church youth group (1992, I think)...we went to different high schools in different districts so we had never met before until then. We became good friends and hung out together. We eventually started dating, got engaged and were married on April 19, 1997. We had our 1st boy, Jellyfish, in March 2000, then our 2nd boy, Octopus, in November 2001. In February 2002, just before Jellyfish turned 2, he got ill with flu-like symptoms. To make a long story short...he ended up hospitalized with bacterial spinal meninigitis. It was quite serious...life threatening to be exact. He was in the hospital for 1 month...2 weeks in intensive care and 2 weeks on the regular floor. We knew that there was a possibility that our little boy would not return home in the same condition as before he was sick...we trusted in the Lord for any outcomes...praise be to God he was alive! The Lord carried us through the difficult time of having a child hospitalized and also having a 3 month old baby to take care of. We had family and our wonderful church family providing childcare, meals and prayers! We found out about 3 weeks into his illness/recovery through a hearing test that Jellyfish was profoundly deaf...we continued to trust in the Lord. After 1 month in the hospital, he was transported to a rehab place where he could work on rolling over, sitting up, crawling and walking again. He spent 1 week at the rehab place and then he was sent home with us over Easter weekend---Praise be to the Lord! He still couldn't quite sit up by himself or crawl or walk and he still had a feeding tube, but he was home! I will shorten up the story...needless to say we had physical therapy and occupational therapy coming to our home...which was grand because we found ourselves pregnant with #3, our only girl, Coral, and I was horribly sick.  Yes you guessed it, we would be having 3 kids in 3 years...okay back to Jellyfish's story. Well he eventually got to walking again and we were learning sign language (Signing Exact English)...and we were pursuing a cochlear implant for him http://products.cochlearamericas.com/cochlear-implants/how-nucleus-5-works . In July 2002, he got his surgery for the implant and in August he was "turned on". We then started the weekly appointments of a 3 year aural rehabilitation program with his implant...and we did have our baby girl in February 2003...and continued with PT and OT weekly as well. Yes, I like to call that time in our lives, "survival mode"! We eventually send Jellyfish to a deaf and hard of hearing school for preschool in the fall of 2003, decide to move closer to the school in 2006, find a great church home, start homeschooling the other two, then have baby #4, our third boy, Starfish, in August 2007. We were pregnant with #5 in late October of 2008, but we found out after Christmastime that we miscarried...that was very hard, especially since it had never happened before, but God is so good and he carried us through! After much prayer and consideration, in 2009, we pulled Jellyfish out of his little school and I am now homeschooling him too. It is wonderful to have him home with us and I see great changes in the relationships with his siblings (and us too). It is a struggle to find ways to teach him...we have learned over the years that he has some learning difficulties...as well as a thing called central auditory processing disorder...though I hate to label him. He tries so hard...you can see it in his sweet little face that he is trying so very hard. So, we have all been learning and growing in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  I can't tell you enough how good He is...but I suspect that many of you know just how good He is!

Congrats to me!

I am an official member of the TOS Homeschool Crew! It is basically a product review program that The Old Schoolhouse started two years ago. Starting in July, I will be receiving product from vendors from all over to use and review their homeschooling related curriculum/product. I will let you know more about it in the weeks to come. So in preparation of this I needed to start a blog, so here it is, I hope you like it.
Melanie