Summer Liven': With Pics

WOW! I have been able to nap over 4 hours today. AMAZING! Sure hope I can sleep tonight.:) Little Caleb has a fever again. I'm thinking it's teething. He finally had two teeth break through this past week. He had a little fever with those. But he's miserable today. I figure I just have to get used to fevers and achy kids. Jakob had high fevers and misery regularly for the first three years of his life. Caleb is following suet.

So every one's napping and I figure I'll update. We're doing well.... See ya!

Na, just kidding:) Let's see, Leif and I are finishing up the main phase of our diet. Leif lost 25 pounds and looks Great! I lost 16 pounds and look better and I feel great! The phase that we're entering now is called the maintenance phase. We get to eat as much as we want of anything except carbs and sugars. So still not perfect, but a lot better then the last phase. We're hoping to continue to loose while we're in this three week maintenance phase. I'm just looking forward to being able to strengthen my muscles and use the elliptical trainer that we borrowed from Leif's parents. It will be nice to have more energy. At least that's what I'm hoping. We'll keep up our HCG blog so we can track how we're doing. The main question that we, and everyone else is asking is, Will We Keep It Off? I sure hope so! We shall see!

Other then our crazy diet, Leif and I are wrapped up in school. He is doing well. It's a pretty intense course and he's trying to stay at his A average. My classes are intense as well. I am just hoping to pass and come away a stronger writer with a more established writing voice and broader experience range. It has not, and will not be easy. But, Leif and I feel good about our schooling efforts. Hopefully it will all rub off onto our kids and their vision of school.

We have had to come up with a routine in order to meet all of the needs of the family. In the morning, Leif and Jakob take care of the chickens and the yard while I do the morning routine around the house and with Caleb. From there, Leif goes over to the trailer (that is his parent's by the way. Some of you thought it was ours. It's not.) Anyway, he goes there and does school work for 3-4 hours. Until lunch time. Then we eat lunch together and I go over to the trailer until around 3 or 4:00. By then, we have to switch gears and just have family time.

Jakob is handling the summer pretty good. He plays outside a lot more and Really appreciates it when we go outside with him. He enjoys doing his school work throughout the week. I had hoped that it would be more organized, but it's not. It pretty much consists of writing his name each day, finding pages to work on in a work book, or playing on the computer on the selected educational sites that I put on his computer. I hope that some how we've kept his brain growing. I shouldn't even question. Today he called out to us in anger and frustration, "you're just jealous!" Uhh, who taught him that? He is a sponge and he is learning ALL kinds of things these days. Good, bad, and ugly!

Jakob started swimming lessons this week. Unfortunately, the water is FREEZING and though once he's there he has a good time, he wakes up each morning and the first thing he says is, "I'm not going to swimming lessons!" Another clue that it's really stressing him out is that his night terrors have become extreme. Night after night he has woken up constantly for hours, until I finally give him benadryl to get him to fall asleep. He also came down with a really yucky cold. So, by Thursday we decided to back off on the swimming lessons this year. We night call K pool to find out if it's warmer during their lesson times. I'm sure it is. So, we'll either take him there or just teach him there ourselves on our own time. Again, we'll see. August is our month without too much school.

Caleb is growing up! He's still my little baby. But he is smart! We can tell that he understands A LOT more then he lets on. He'll shake his head yes and no according to the way he feels. He's crawl over for family prayer and last night he even half way folded his arms. He is a CLIMBER! He won't walk, but he will climb! He especially loves the step stools up to Jakob's bed and to the kitchen table. So now we have to tip the stools on their side when they're not in use. Several times I have forgotten the kitchen stool and I'll turn around and Caleb will be sitting in the middle of the table playing with whatever he can. One time it was a big cup of water. He spilled it. That's what alerted me to his circumstance. Unfortunately, I didn't catch that he had put Leif's cell phone in the cup before he dumped out the water. So Leif's phone sat in a bit of water for a while and had to take a few days to dry out. RRRG!

Caleb is a tease too! He finds all kinds of ways to tease us. Mostly doing little things against our will and snickering as he does them. Silly, normal, baby!:) So Precious!!! We love him so much!

So, like I said, we're doing well.