Caring for the Elderly

Today has been a horrific day. I flew back to Ohio hoping to visit family and take care of a few things for my grandmother. There have been quite a few things going on with her and everyone is completely frustrated with the situation. So here comes Kelly who seems to think she can save the world from everything or at least valiantly tries. I will start with the beginning.

My grandmother has always been a high needs type of person. She bascially wont leave her home to do anything, as much as we try or beg her to go shopping with us or come out to my parents for holidays she flat out refuses. Shes very demanding and quite grumpy. We've always taken this as a sign of getting older and continued to help her have quality of life and made sure she always had freedom to make her own choices, but the resources to help her continue to be on her own. Until recently its never been a real problem, until she met "chester". Now this man comes from a very interesting family. Sex offenders mostly with some domestic violence here and there. Yes I know the sex offender part raises HUGE flags for me. We never said anything about this friendship until there seemed to be quite a bit of money missing from her checking account. "Chester" was cashing checks from my grandmother every other day sometimes everyday. She called me one day in a panic saying she was in trouble and that she needed my help. I live in California and she lives in Ohio so it makes it difficult to be very involved in her affairs so I have to trust that my mother does most of the work in that area. My mother tries her best, but sometimes her best isn't good enough. So today I called the elder abuse line. This seems like its the right avenue...we shall see.

You scored as Romanticist. Romanticism encourages society to look backwards to find our solutions. Your rationale is that things were much better a few hundred years ago so we should thus look back to those times and replace them in our modern society. You believe in a simple life and that the complexities of the modern world have turned it upside down.

Romanticist		69%
Postmodernist		44%
Idealist		44%
Fundamentalist		38%
Cultural Creative		38%
Materialist		25%
Modernist		6%
Existentialist		0%

What is Your World View? (corrected...again)
created with QuizFarm.com

Airline travel and Sanity

Wow, we made it to Ohio, safe, exhausted, and still somewhat sane. Well as sane as I ever will be or ever have been. The trip to get to my parents house, is long and can be a humongous nightmare depending on your "airline Karma". Mine on this trip I would say was a 7 out of 10, could be worse, could have been better. First of all I just want to say, Tom I love you but picking a flight that leaves out Of Minetta at 6:26 am. Probably not the ideal time frame with two small children. BUT.....I appreciate the effort. So yes, our flight left at 6:26 am and we had to be up at 4 am. I left the kids sleeping until we were ready to go and we jumped in the car dawning our most sylish jammies (well the kids did not me). So we get checked in and all is good so far, our flight is expected to depart on time. Now those of you who fly a lot, especially with kids, know that departing on time is an added bonus. As we walk towards the security check in we are thinking we can get some food and let the kids play at the play area before the daunting jaunt through security (me...alone, two kids, a stroller, our carry ons, and trying to force caitlin to walk through the metal detectors. HA HA....its no picnic). As we round the corcer we see a line that stretches almost down to the baggage area. We figure Tom should stand in line while I take Miss Bean to the restroom so we dont have to deal with any accidental emptying of bladder contents onto the floor or us. Its always good to avoid that whenever possible. By the time I get back from the bathroom Tom is almost up to the security point to go through the metal detectors. The link went fairly fast. So we had a quck good bye, and off through the metal detectors I went. It was fairly uneventful and easy, I think I've pretty well got a system set up. All non-essential kids stuff first, then deal with the stroller, take shoes off in advance because they always ask me to anyway, then the camera and the laptop. Those go last because i"m always afraid someone is just gonna leisurely walk away with it. So Caitlin as expected would NOT go through the metal detectors. She started to cry and really did look scared. The new security system is pretty overwhelming even to me, so imagine a 3.5 year old trying to make it through there. So they tell me to pick her up and walk through making sure not to touch the sides of the metal detectors because the alarm will go off. HA HA HA. Are you guys picturing this at all?? Me, a 3.5 year old in one arm a 14 month old in another, and they want me to make sure NOT to touch the sides. Of course of first attempt was complete failure and we had to try again, this time I'm holding the kids in my arms and hold their hands so they wont touch the sides. SUCCESS. Ok *sigh of relief* that was easy. Now it was time to load up all of our crap back onto the stroller and head off to the gate. I set caitlin down, still holding goo luckily they open the stroller for me. I figure I can wait to put my shoes back on when I get tot he gate. AS soon as I get there, we set down for about five minutes and then the guy lets us load up before anyone else !! WOOHOOO AND they helped me up the stairs with the car seat and the carryons. Of course we are stuck in the next to last row of the airplane. And goo immediately starts his ear deafening screams. And of course everyone seems to be getting huffy already. Must be the 6am departure time. So we made it just fine through this trip praying the entire time that the gate will be close to where we land....wishful thinking but it never hurts to say a lil prayer....Ok so I prayed the entire trip. But of course I had to walk from C concourse to B concourse (O'hare). I arrive sweaty, tired and hungry. So I forgot to mention that earlier in the morning I asked Tom to scramble up some eggs put them in a ziplock for me so I could give them to the kids on the airplane. His response?? "NO its ok we can buy some eggs at the airport". Now if you remember correctly we didnt' quite make it to have breakfast. Moral of the story, ignore your husband and go with your gut. :) So luckily there was a little sandwich stand next to our gate and I got a sandwich for us to share and some drinks. On our earlier flight our flight attends kept skipping us for drinks and snack boxes, I kept having to ask. Why ?? Who knows. So caitlin is running amuck around the gate seating area and I'm watching thinking "whatever it takes to survive she needs to get her legs moving. So finally I get her back because again, they let us board earlier than anyone else WOOHOO! This trip was a little rougher than the first. Caitlin decides while we are sitting and eating our sandwich in our seats to stick her leg out in the isle while people are walking by, kicking the mans seat in front of us, shes just being down right obnoxious. So I moved her to the middle seat and then she starts to annoy her brother and just all around being a little.....Now I hate to say it but theres no other word to describe it.....BRAT. Finally I raise my voice telling her to quick now that I'm not going to put up with anymore from her. And as I"m doing that, I realize its very quiet on the plane no ones talking. I end my Mommy talk and then at once like nothing happened everyone starts to talk again. It was the weirdest thing. So we make it to Columbus and all I can think of is, Mom better be waiting right at the gate. So we meet her at the gate she takes the kids to the pick up area where my dad is driving around for us, and I grab the bags and car seat and luckily they were all the first bags out. WOOHOO. Then we drove 2.5 hours home to my parents. The kids slept and we were all exhausted. Everyone slept well. To bad it didn't last.

Bakers Wedding

So On saturday we went to our friend Bakers wedding in San Fransisco. He wed the most amazing woman (Cindy), shes awesome and we are all so excited to have her join our family (ok extended family, but family nonetheless). So excited that I bawled through the entire ceremony, I didn't even cry this much at my own wedding. I'm posting a few pics of the awesome occassion. We attended your typical Christian wedding with all the fixings; prayer, worship, vows, rings prayer, cake, garter, etc etc. Then off to a Chinese Wedding Banquet at the Gold Mountain restaurant in San Fransisco. It was such an amazing event with a whole lot of awesome chinese customs. I have gained so much respect for their culture and it intrigues me. I might have to read up more, it was such a fun experience overall. Cindy swapped her traditional american white wedding dress for a Chinese wedding dress. Can I say how gorgeous she looked. They were so cute together.

These are the Lions from the Lion Dance. Rumor has it that they are good for chasing away evil spirits.

This is a picture of Baker and Cindy receiving blessings from the lions after the lion dance. It was awesome.

Here are the instrumentalists for the lion dance.

We're All A bit Chicken.......

Chinese Custom is to leave the Head with the rest of the chicken, it signifies completeness or wholeness.

Tom enjoying the chicken head....

Mary Beth Pretending to enjoy the chicken Head

And Alex completely disgusted over the eating of the chicken head.....I'm right there with ya dood....

Trip to Ohio

So Tuesday we leave out of san jose at 6 am (ugh) for Ohio to visit family. The kids are really excited about going, of course I am to, but what I am even more excited about is going on little field trips. My home town is very historic so there are so many things to see. If you want to learn more click here.

More mud...

IMG_2763
Originally uploaded by kabobbers.

Christian enjoying his first time out gardening with mommy, he was so muddy we had to take his clothes off and hose him down.

Caitlinerella

IMG_2842
Originally uploaded by kabobbers.

Caitlin in her last class at ballet. She did pretty good, she is still getting over the shyness phase.

The Infamous Garage

The garage.....Its a point of contention between me and my husband. We use it as an extra living space since it has my laundry area in it and we just have a very small house. The extra space is nice. We have our computers in there, our email server, basically the "geek" room. And anything else Tom sees fit to clutter in there. Now for the story.

On weekends we've decided to make sure that saturday morning is dedicated to working around the house. It seems we never have enough time to do anything. So Saturday morning thats all we do. Then the rest of the day is ours to do as we want. I will usually say ok todays a work day come on guys, lets figure out what all we need to do. Whats my husbands first response?? I need to clean the garage. Umm VERY LOW priority. I usually roll my eyes and say uh I dont think so. We have outside work to be done. And he gets grumpy. So this is the trend most every weekend. So today I cleaned the garage. All the crappy boxes, vacuumed and I put away things that should have been put away, the garbage my husband always seems to "forget". and cleaning the rugs etc. Sooooo.....all he has to do is get rid of his boxes from work, take them back to work or toss it all, I dont care which. Post the bookcase shelves on freecycle, that are without a book case, and organize his music stuff. So he's not allowed to complain anymore about the garage needing to be cleaned :)

Oh if that sounded like a to do list.....well it sorta is :)

Getting Back on Track

So this weeks focus has been to get back on track with school and a continuation of working on letters and letter sounds. Yesterday was a very good school day. Caitlin stayed focused and really tried her best. She's still in love with the Signing time videos and her vocabulary is astounding. Shes beginning to form complete sentences with her signing. Her favorite thing to sign is "Mom, I want ice cream please." We usually get a huge kick out of it, laugh and she loves the attention from being so funny. Chrisitian is picking up several words as well. He loves watching the videos and dances along with the music. He's picked up please, water, and eat. Also yesterday we introduced Caitlin to Shel Silverstein. I purchased a new book called "A Runny Babbit." And its a collection of poems with the first letter of two words in any line switched. Its a fun book, caitlin read 43 pages of poems with us last night. Of course Tom had to break out "Where the sidewalk ends". Which has GREAT poems in it. My favorite, I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor. Caitlin liked that one as well. We also worked on recognizing larger numbers and quantity of larger numbers. 7, 8, 9 . And of course no day will be complete unless we play the letter factory game. Today we will read some more in Alice in wonderland. Caitlin will do some journaling about alice, and then we will start working on the solar system. Stay tuned for pictures of our homemade solar system.

Stepping Down

So I stepped down from my leadership position at church in the nursery and 2's and 3's. I sent a short email out to our pastors explaining that I need to stop for my own sanity and the well-being of my family. I'm feeling so overwhelmed in so many areas of my life. And this is an area I feel in which I can't screw up. The kids in our ministry are so important to me and in some ways I dont even feel adequate enough to teach them. Of course they deserve so much more than me as the person that leads them, and I need to realize that the only person who can lead them better than me is Jesus(ok i'm not saying the only best person to do it, but I'm the only person interested enough with a passion who wants to, clear things up a bit??). And lets be honest, I will never be jesus :) All kidding aside tho, now is the time when the enemy kind of gets in there and brings out your most fearful fears and your deepest secrets and uses them so that he can beat you down for the betterment of him. For his own selfish satisfaction. And I know that that is going on. I feel tired pretty much constantly and of course thats not all related to childrens ministry. Its more related to life in general. My daughter is going through so many things right now, whether its just typical 4 year old development or if its something more we dont know. But its stressful (stay tuned for future blogs on this). And my grandmother, God bless her is DRIVING ME BERSERK. There are so many things going on with her, health, financial, mental. All this wrapped up into one is making it so difficult to function everyday. I constantly get these hysteric calls from her, angry frustrated calls from my mom, and then dealing with APS trying to get them resolved. Its taking its toll (stay tuned for more blogging on this). Then theres me. Who has time to take care of onesself?? I surely have never taken the time. I've only ever spent time on pleasing others or taking care of others. <--- horrible people pleaser. So multiplied by all those children's ministry things that are going nutty, I kinda feel like a break is in order. At least for the mean time. And maybe I can come back from Ohio a little more like me. Or maybe a little less like me :)

The Foxworthy Hood

ok, so its not really that funny, but...... Tom, the kids, and I were sitting in the living room discussing what our plans were. I was thinking of taking Caitlin to a little place called "Artopia".
When all of a sudden I hear cop cars outside making that "blurp blurp" noise with their siren. I jumped out of my chair, yelling for Tom, it was right outside our house. We open the front door and there are like 5 or 6 teens walking along the sidewalk in front of our house and the cops are yelling for them to come back. We go back in the house fairly nervous before deciding to leave to go off on our outing. We had just put together our new stroller for our trip and I was taking the kids on a ride out the front door, I was pushing the kids through the yard and as I was walking I Look down and theres a little baggie laying on the ground. Of course I immediately know what it is. Can you believe those lil bastards threw their baggie of pot in my yard?? So me being the pissy and might I add brilliant woman that I am, pick it up and push the kids over to where the cops and the teens are. I loudly pronounce, Hey guys did you lose something that you really needed?? Of course the kids are staring at me shaking their heads no, and saying, its not mine. Of course which makes me even madder and I just start yelling at these kids. No fear what-so-ever. I can't believe I did that. But when the safety of your kids is being compromised, you will do or say just about anything I guess. I handed the Pot to the officer and walked back to my house furious and ready to start swinging. Tom just keeps saying calm down calm down. I really felt like I was about to lose it. I mean what NERVE to throw it in our yard. Anyway, the cop continues to talk to the boys saying, "guys that woman is pissed". WELL DUH! :) hehehe. Anyway, so a lot of things are going to be changing around here starting with that house down the street. I will do what I need to to make our neighborhood safe. I got in contact with the guy that started up the Neighborhood watch and I will be working VERY closely with him on this. He along with the rest of our neighborhood is fed up.

My Mother's Day Present

So for a very long time I've been resisting the whole IPOD Fad. I was like honestly what would I need one for??? I purchased one for my husband (who was adamant about getting one) for our 4th wedding anniversary. Slowly in time I became sold on the whole idea. I mean you can carry this thing around and no need to worry about changing cd's. So I decided while I was out walking at Campbell Par course that I needed one. Not only to drown out the screams of my children while I'm walking, but help make that walking time go by faster. Its small portable and OH SO CUTE! :)
This is the one I got.
But in green :)

Happy Carb

I'm so excited, happy carb is finally up and kicking. Its a cell phone application that my husband and his friend have been working on. The site is up so go check it out if you get a chance! :)

Alice in Wonderland

So yesterday I went to costco and found a large amount of old treasury books for a pretty inexpensive price. All classics I want to read to caitlin. So we picked them up and started to read Alice in Wonderland. I'm shocked at how she is sitting and listening to the detail of this book. Its a fairly large chapter book. The girl loves to read so I figured I would try something larger. Today she asked questions about the book, like what are tears. I was shocked at the question assuming she knew what they were. I guess we had only mentioned tears as crying. I'm sure I've said, "no tears please". But then again maybe not. So I explained to her what tears were. Which led to a whole conversation on food and where food comes from and how cookies are made and driven to the grocery store. Yes I know an odd tangent. We've also been working on dot to dots today. She loves them and its helping her with the larger numbers she confuses. She gets so excited because she fixes "the broken" house, or the broken clouds. Its cute. Christian started to get pretty fussy, because he misses his sister while we are doing school. So we are taking a break so they can play(which they are now laughing at each putting christians pants on each others heads they are so funny together). Also yesterday I found, caitlins reading curriculum for next year. I've decided to use HOP for reading. And A Beka for math, bible, and writing. Science we can make up as we go along. Shes very much into bugs so I think we can work on that and do some stars things or maybe animals. This portion I think we can keep child led, because I want her to stay interested. And signing time for our foreign language. Now I just need to come up with a calendar for the year and figure out what days we will cover what subjects. EEEKS! I guess I do have all summer :)

So we finished up school today and it was a good day. We finished up calendar and then played the letter factory game, its such a fun game and my daughter loves it. Its a great phonics teacher. There are two levels to the game. She is definitely learning the sounds of the letters and also which letter comes before and after. Also we got the imagination desk
and she loves that also. It helps with writing learning letters and sounds and listening skills. Its a great idea. My daughter loves it, and there are three options, coloring, games, and music. We finished up with fun toe and fingernail painting, now its mommy laundry time. Catch up with us tomorrow to see what fun things we are off to do.

Relay for Life

So I'm thinking of doing Relay for Life.
A friend of mine forwarded me the link for the races and I think its an awesome idea. I want it to be in memory of my father in law. He was an awesome man and I learned quite a bit from him. He died a year ago this June and what better way to celebrate his life than to run a race. Of course I'm not completely in shape for it, actually its more of a walk than race. hehehe. I wanna see how many people I can get involved in it with me. Who knows maybe I can get some family to come out for it !! :)

A couple things Today...

So today I got an awesome surprise.... Packeteer, the new company my husband is working for, sent us a huge box from the wine gift basket store. Its completely packed with all kinds of goodies inside. : ) Of course my daughter already tried to dive into it. Its very cute. I will probably take a picture of it and post it here later.

Also I've decided to go on strike. For now on my family is going to wear dirty clothes. Any clothes that I see thrown on the floor I will be putting back their drawers or back in the closet. I'm kinda tired of picking up dirty clothes. I mean come on!! The clothes basket is 10 feet away!! I mean I dont mind if you throw it down at night when your getting ready for bed, but pick it up in the morning. Its really not THAT hard :)

Life Soundtrack

opening credits: Wide Open Spaces - Dixie Chicks
waking-up scene: I'm Sensitive - Jewel
average-day scene: Sail Away - Enya
best-friend scene: Circle Of Friends - Point Of Grace
first-date scene: You and I Both Jason Mraz or Why can't I
Breathe Liz Phair
falling-in-love scene: you stepped out of a dream peter Cincotti or head over feet alanis morrisette
love scene: God gave me you Brian White
sex scene: Lets get it on Marvin Gaye
really dirty sex scene: BumbleBee Aqua
heartbreak scene: Torn Natalie Imbruglia first cut is the deepest S.C.
break up scene: You oughta know alanis morisette
get-back-together scene: I want to grow old with you adam sandler
fight-with-friend scene: I got friends in low places garth
fights-at-home scene: kung fu fighting carl douglas
mental-breakdown scene: Im a bitch Meredith Brookes
driving scene: cruisin gweneth paltrow and hewey lewis
deep-thought scene: wishing and hoping ani defranco
lesson-learning scene: Complicated avril lavigne
'life's okay' scene: closer to free bo deans
flashback scene: Let Go Avril Lavigne
party scene: Everybody dance now C&C music factory
regret scene: OOps i did it again Britney spears
transitional scene: whose that girl madonna
slow-dance song: Amazed Lonestar
happy-dance song: The Chicken Dance
long-night-alone scene: Afraid to sleep dido
epic triumph scene: Trading my sorrows Darrell Evans
death scene: This was your time michael w smith
closing credits: In the arms of an angel sarah Mclaughlin

My tradition selector..

I took this test to see where I fall in regards to religious affiliation. Yeah. I'm not sure I agree....but it was neat to take.

Rank

Item

Percent

1: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (100%)
2: Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God (91%)
3: Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist (90%)
4: Congregational/United Church of Christ (89%)
5: Church of Christ/Campbellite (78%)
6: Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic) (76%)
7: Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England (71%)
8: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (67%)
9: Lutheran (65%)
10: Seventh-Day Adventist (65%)
11: Eastern Orthodox (61%)
12: Presbyterian/Reformed (52%)
13: Roman Catholic (39%)

Income amount for a SAHM

http://snipurl.com/enfj

A Great Day

So today was a fantastic day. This morning we headed out to a playdate with friends and we went for a long long walk. The kids played very well together, and caitlin had a great day overall. We talked a lot about asking for forgiveness when we do something inappropriate to our friends. That we all make mistakes. Caitlin worked on sign language today and amazed me at the size of her SL vocabulary. Her and Christian both are in love with the Signing Time video series. I love it took, The music is very cute.




Liz's suggestions for our homeschool name.

my way or the highway school of kelly
75% less corruption than public 50% less than private
Byrnenstein Bears Homeschool

WHINE WHINE WHINE!!

Alright guys, so the quiz was a bit tricky! I'm sorry. Everyone who guessed photography as my favorite hobby go ahead and add a point to your score. No bill you can not add a point for finding the misspelled word (i misspelled avocado. thank u very much for noticing bill). It seems like everyone thought they knew me better than they did HAH! Shows you what you really know. My dad seems to think I'm still 8 and I still like New Kids on the Block, sorry dad -1 point for you. I do NOT like NKOTB anymore. I'm very much beyond that phase in my life :) And I mean come on who really likes a color with their name in it..... not I, hunter guys hunter :) . Anyway, what a fun game, and thanks to shannon M, I have been able to get all my friends addicted to it. :) I hope everyone had a good laugh! I sure did.

My Photography

I love taking pictures. I'm not amazing at it or anything but I try my darndest :) Here are just a couple :)

Water Babies

This is Christian swimming under water! Daddy loves to swim with him, and he is getting better all the time. He loves to scoot off the edge of the pool in all by himself. Stay tuned for more pictures :)

WOO!! Look at them! Are they having a Tea Party??

Caitlin Getting Ready to.....

Disappear!! :)
Caitlin is doing such a great job! She is a natural swimmer and loves to stay underwater ALL the time.

New HomeSchool Name

So we need to come up with a name for our homeschool. Ya, it could be Byrne Homeschool, but I want something that really has a meaning for us and our school. Something that oozers our faith and our families school Motto. OOHH I should post our Motto and our Mission statement. I will do that :) So I want everyones thoughts and ideas, just leave a comment and we can pick one :)

Stay tuned.......

Back To School

So today we were back to school after taking a week and a few days off. Caitlin went through a bit of an off period and we had been schooling for 6 straight weeks. I needed a break and some time to refocus a bit. So back to the grind it was. Everyday we try to have a routine when we do school. We start with Circle time which includes opening songs and calendar. Its amazing how many different subjects can be covered in just calendar. After that we did some science, I let caitlin play around with some colored water. we had 4 clear bowls with four different colors and two empty clear bowls. I gave her a dropper for each color and let her have at it, mixing and making as many colors as she wanted. She loved it! She's a very creative kid so things like that she lives for. I've posted some pics below of her doing her project. After that we did some math and some writing and scribbling and our letter of the week is M. She had a fairly good day at school. Tomorrow we have a playdate with some friends and school in the afternoon.



Caitlin preparing for his experiment, she can hardly contain herself. She kept asking, " When can I start mom!!"


Christian never wanting to be left out, hangs out with us during school. He loves to color, and occasionally eat the crayons.

Take the Kelly Quiz

Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!


Lets see how well you all know me ! :)