Learning

Happy Birthday Jackson!

The world's cutest year old nephew celebrated his birthday today! He had a party with his friends and family, cake, ice cream and, according to his father, a slight mishap with a birthday candle. But all is well and all are looking forward to another great year with Jackson!

At the Denver Aquarium

Abby had her end of the year evaluation (an every-other-year requirement for homeschoolers in Colorado) yesterday. It went very well and now she is ready to party. We have another week and a half before we take our summer break.

With Cousin Doug, waiting to go into the aquarium

Tropical plants.

Colorful fish.

Touching the manta rays.

Interesting fish.

Finding Nemo.

And Dory, too.

Testing Doug's patience.

Impressive tiger!

Our new parental discipline technique is proving to be surprisingly effective.

*Cue scary music*

I think the last week of school is the hardest in some ways. Still
work to do, but the motivation is lagging. The trip to the aquarium will tide the kiddos over until summer break officially comes (I hope).

Hiking in the Park

The best parts about hiking in spring are: cooler temperatures, no snakes and no poison oak!

*Fabrics for the memory quilt*

Almost seventy different fabrics, six squares of each. My hand hurts from so much cutting! And there are still more fabrics to go! I couldn't use any home decorating fabrics or those that were not 100% cotton. I realized that I have sewn a lot of dresses over the years...And curtains and bed skirts and shower curtains and pillows and tablecloths, quilts and pillowcases.

We pulled out our "Game of Graces" and played on the snow covered grass today.

Waiting for Spring

Not Again...

While checking our credit card statement online, we noticed that we have once again been the victims of credit card theft. (!) Last time if was with my debit card- this time it is the credit card.

Apparently, the credit card company had issued us new cards since our old ones expire this month. Since we never received them - and it's been several weeks since they were mailed- it seems that someone stole them from the mail. We have a locked mailbox, so that was not the problem.

I immediately asked for a new credit card number (for some reason, this company did not offer to do this. Our bank/debit card company did this for us before we even knew our number had been stolen!) but I did not worry so much this time.

Why, you ask?

Let me tell you what you need to do so that when (yes, when) your information is stolen, you are protected from several months of dealing with the problem.

By certified mail, write to EACH of the credit reporting agencies: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian and request that a SECURITY FREEZE be placed on all your records. This means that anyone who wants to access your information for the purpose of taking out a loan (for a car, furniture, etc) will have to contact you directly to lift the freeze. If the loan request was not from you, you can inform the company that the application was fraudulent and that will be the end of it.

Having a security freeze on your account does limit you in small ways. You cannot apply for an in-store credit card on the spot and if you want to apply for a car or house loan, you will have to write to the credit reporting agencies to temporarily lift the freeze to give creditors access to your credit history. Although there is usually not a fee to place a freeze, it will cost you around ten dollars per credit reporting agency to reinstate the freeze after it has been lifted for a time. (This is money well spent, in my opinion). Your current creditors will still be allowed access to your information even with the freeze.

I have spent weeks answering phone calls from used car dealers wanting to finish my paperwork for my car loan...Packages arriving that I did not order. I was signed up for several book clubs. And my stolen card was only active for three days before the account was shut down! The smaller issues like the book and coffee clubs would have happened if I had a security freeze or not. Those are easy to fix with a call to the companies and/or bank by disputing the charges. However, the bigger problems like all the loan applications would not have caused me a moments concern if I had had the freeze in place the first time since there would not have been much of a chance that the loan would have gone through (and my credit score hurt from those fraudulent debts).

Please consider placing a security freeze on your records with Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. It will save you so much trouble when this happens to you! Besides regulaly monitering your bank accounts, this is the best way to protect yourself and your identity!

Equifax.com
TransUnion.com
Experian.com
*All have information on their front page on how to request a security freeze*

Hannah and Oliver at Christmastime

This past week has been a hard one for the kids. Last week, Hannah's favorite bunny, Oliver, died of pneumonia. We tried many different things to help him including antibiotics, but after several months of being sick, his body just couldn't fight it anymore.

We got Oliver initially just to breed Abby's rabbit and then we were going to give him back to the breeder ("The Bunny Lady"). However, Hannah formed a strong attachment to Oliver and when the Bunny Lady saw how much Oliver loved Hannah (by jumping out of the cage into her arms and purring loudly), she immediately gave him to Hannah.

I referred to Oliver as "Hannah's boyfriend" because you could see the stars in his eyes whenever Hannah was around.

On Saturday, Jacob came in crying because his rabbit, Bud, was dying. We were worried that our bunnies were passing around some sort of sickness because Bud had been healthy. A quick call to the Bunny Lady informed us that Bud was an old bunny and was dying of old age.

Jacob and Bud on Saturday

Knowing that Bud was not sick made the process of letting him go easier for Jacob. He was able to spend all of Saturday and part of Sunday morning saying goodbye to his pet (Bud died while Jacob was at church).

In The Backyard...

I'm not sure if it's all the Hardy Boy books, "The Dangerous Book for Boys", the video we watched called "The 1940's' House" where an English family lived for three months like they would have in England during WWII including building a bomb shelter in their backyard- but- Jacob is enthralled with digging a huge pit in our back yard.

At first he said he was making a bomb shelter, but now he is a bit more ambitious. He has plans to dig a network of tunnels all over the property...

Hope has joined him in this adventure.

He digs every day after school and on the weekends. Pretty soon our yard will look like we have the wost case of gophers ever seen. Hopefully he'll tire before then.

The dog keeps watch.

A Project Seventeen Years In The Making

When Brian and I were planning our wedding way back when, I began saving fabrics for a quilt I wanted to make someday. Every time I sewed something for the wedding, our home, our new babies, etc. I would make sure to save the scraps so that eventually I would have enough fabric to make a "memory quilt".

So many fabrics- so many memories. Toddlers running around in little regency dresses, young ladies in lovely gowns. A little boy in jammies.

All those fabrics to iron before they are cut.

An ever growing pile- and this is just for the first seventeen years!

Around the House...

It snowed yesterday for a few hours and there was enough snow to make a snowman (or a snow chair).

I asked Abby to take some pictures outside for me. She tried to take some of Jacob and Hope, but they mostly ran away from her!

View from the front yard.

Jacob and Hope have been playing with Lincoln logs in the family room the past few days. Notice the cowboy/soldier guarding the barn from the roof. And another cowboy apparently shooting something from beside the house. Wonder why all the animals appear to be dead. Hmmm.

In school news, Jacob and Hope's new math program came today- from "Math-U-See". Hannah has been using their Pre-Algebra course and has liked it so I thought I'd see how Jacob did with it. We have always used "Making Math Meaningful" but once we hit Algebra (after that series had ended), we floundered. We checked out another video Algebra program and were not impressed. We liked "Math-U-See" for Hannah, so we'll see how it works for the younger grades.

If nothing else, the manipulatives are colorful and fun to play with!