Saying Goodbye to a Sweet Little Friend

Yesterday we lost our sweet rat, Ruby. I'm not sure what happened to her. She had always been smaller than her sister, Mina, but I just thought she was naturally a small girl. She seemed fine and was playing on Saturday. Sunday morning Isaac mentioned to me that she didn't come out of her hammock when he went to say hi to them but I didn't think much of it.

A few hours later, he ran upstairs sobbing, and told me that Ruby died. I went to see what was going on and Russ was holding her. She was still with us, but barely. She wasn't moving, blinking and you could barely tell she was breathing. We held her, loved her and kept her warm for about an hour and a half and then she passed away in Russ's hands.

Isaac took it very hard. He cried and cried, locked himself in the bathroom for awhile and said he never wanted another pet again, it was just too hard to lose them. We eventually convinced him to come out and he went and sat with Ruby until she died. After we all said our goodbyes and let Mina see her and say goodbye, we made up a box for her. We lined it with layers of fleece, put in some eggs noodles which were a favorite treat, a toilet paper roll that she loved to chew and we covered her with another fleece blanket and an old sock-another favorite bedding of hers. We picked a special spot in our yard to bury her and will plant flowers there this spring.

Ruby will be greatly missed. She was such a sweet, fun, outgoing and feisty little rat and we loved her to bits. Goodbye sweet Rubester.

He Makes Me Laugh

Isaac's DS had been missing for a couple of days and we were all going crazy looking for it. The loss was especially hard because he had gotten a new game and hadn't had a chance to play it yet. As with most anything that gets lost around here, the blame fell on Sam.

After, yet another, day of looking with no luck I went to tuck Isaac in for the night. He was lying in bed watching an Elmo dvd. As I went to give him a kiss, he said "I figured watching Elmo and thinking like a baby would help me to figure out where Sam put my DS." Gotta love his logic!

Thankfully I finally found it last night. : )

The Force is With Him

For the past couple weeks, whenever I'd go to put Isaac's laundry away, this is what I'd find in his closet...

Today he happened to be in his room as I was hanging up his clothes. I told him that he needed to stop pulling all of his shirts off their hangers when he got dressed and just take off the one he was going to wear. His response?

"Sorry. I guess I must be watching too much Star Wars. I think I have the Force so I pull on every shirt and the one that falls down is the one I'm supposed to wear."

Sick Days

SamSam is still feeling under the weather so today's activities have consisted of a lot of temperature taking, hugging, kissing and snuggling.
His temp got up to about 103.5 during the night and has hung right around 100.5-101 most of the day. All he wants to do is snuggle on the couch on my lap and anyone who knows Sam, knows that sitting still is not something he usually enjoys doing. That tells you how icky he's feeling.

He tried to go about his normal business and play at first this morning, but that only lasted about 10 minutes before he was climbing up in my lap again.

Thankfully he has big brothers who love to take care of him and give him lots of get better kisses. Daddy even came home from work for a quick break to give me a chance to grab something to eat.




As much as I hate him being sick, I'm savoring all of the cuddling I'm getting to do with him today. But I sure hope my little sweetie-pea is up and running very soon!

I was planning on posting tonight about a very cool project I'm going to do, but alas, it didn't happen. My sweet Sammy is sick tonight and only wanted to be held until he fell asleep. I have a hard time focusing on much when my babies are sick, I get too preoccupied with how they're doing, so I wasn't in the mood for crafting.

SO....instead I'll share what turned out to be a big hit. I went treasure hunting at the Goodwill this afternoon as the decorating bug has bit me big time lately. I didn't have a ton of luck on that end (although I did find a cool lamp I'm going to paint for only 2.99) but I did find a present for Russ. They had new-in-the-box conditioning vests that hold 20lbs. I had never heard of such a thing before but, since it had to do with working out, I figured Russ might like it so I bought it for a little surprise gift.

He's never mentioned wanting one so I thought I might end up returning it but no siree! He was totally excited to get it! Apparently, he's wanted one for quite some time and has even put one in his shopping cart before but could never bring himself to spend the $50 that they usually cost. Yep...$50!! And just guess how much I spent on it? If you guessed $9.99 you're absolutely right! Even better is the fact that he's worn it all night and keeps saying how excited he is to finally have one and how much he loves it. Now that's what I call a great deal.

Sorry for the crappy picture, my camera wasn't liking the reflective strips. Oh, and wave hi to Diego there in the background!

Quick Sand

Isaac got a quicksand science kit for Christmas and has been very anxious to do it. I put it in one of his workboxes today and we had fun playing with goopy, messy, sloppy quicksand. I have to say, it was pretty awesome! Is it just me, or does anyone else get traumatic flashbacks to the horse scene in Neverending Story when they think of quicksand?

Workboxes

Today we started a new way of doing school using the Workbox System developed by Sue Patrick. I spent the past couple of weeks reading blogs and taking what I wanted from how each person did their system. Since we're just trying it out, I also did not want to invest a lot of money until I saw how it worked for us so I'm using what we already had for now.

I'm using a toy bin organizer that was in our play room for Isaac's boxes-worked out perfectly since there were 12 bins. For Elijah, I used a small bookshelf that we already had and bought a few cheap bins at Walmart. He's starting with 6 instead of 12.

To number their boxes I made laminated sheets with each of their names and the numbers 1-14. The Workbox System just calls for 12 but I added a couple extra in case I wanted/needed them at any time. I also made a few extra cirlces that said "Snack", "10 minute break", "play outside for 20 minutes", etc.

The numbers are velcroed on to their sheets. I plan on putting velcro on their bins as well but ran out so for now, I just toss the number into the correct box. So the night before, I set up their box by putting in the work along with the number tag. As they finish their box, they put the number back on their sheet and when all of the numbers are replaced and boxes are empty-they're done!

I've seen many people put a pencil in each bin that it's needed, crayons in each bin, and so on but I'm using an idea from an online friend of mine instead. You can see how she does her system here. We're doing totes with all of their supplies. I bought small scrapbooking organizers at Walmart (they were $6 each) and filled them with crayons, pencils, pencil sharpeners, colored pencils, rulers, scissors, glue sticks, their "I need help" cards and Isaac's has a chapter book to read for when he's waiting for me to help him. This way they can take their totes with them wherever they choose to work.
It's only been our first day of doing workboxes but so far, so good! They both really enjoyed going through their boxes and the fun things mixed in gives them the motivation to finish the things they consider not-so-fun. Eventually I really want to get this system from IKEA but that will have to wait until funds allow.