Valentine's Day Challenge

Wow! Can I say how happy to see that are now at 6% of our goal? It can be fun and frustrating to slowly see that ticker move up closer and closer to what we need to make our trip for Maggie's surgery. This is definitely a big undertaking to do that's for certain. Its not easy to do fundraisers at all, and its even harder to ask people for money. But in the end you have to do what you have to do to get the best medical care for your child that's for sure.

So we've decided to set up a Valentine's Day challenge for everyone out there in blog land.

Maggie loves Valentine's Day. She loves to cut out hearts:


She loves chocolate:


So what more could one ask for?

So our Valentine's Day Challenge is this: For every $14 you donate to our Go Fund Me.com fundraiser we will put your name in our Starbucks raffle.
If you love coffe, you'll love this fundraiser.
The prize will be a $25 Starbucks giftcard, a Starbucks cup and a bag of Starbucks coffee for you to enjoy.


So what are you waiting for? Visit and give today. So $14 will put your name in the raffle, $28 will give you two chances, $42 three chances and so on. Also no worries info for snail mail donations is on the page as well.

What more could YOU ask for? You'll be helping out a great causing and possibly winning a great prize for yourself!

Our family fundraiser

Wow, time surely is flying by for sure. It was last May that we were at Cincinnati Children's talking about surgery for Maggie.
Maggie is our youngest child. She is 5 years old and born with a condition called VACTERL Association.
VACTERL Association is not a disease, or a syndrome but a condition where the child is born with random birth defects. All children with VACTERL are born with different anomolies. They are all like snowflakes. Each one is so beautiful and so unique with what they have. We usually identify what our children were born with by the letters in the acroynm VACTERL. A child is diagnosed with VACTERL when everything else has been eliminated and they have three out of the 7 letters. Sometimes its also known as VATER Syndrome as well. Its much better to use the term VACTERL instead of my child was born with Vertebral, Anal, Cardiac, Tracheal, Esophageal, Renal(kidney), Limb.,
Instead I can say Maggie was born with VACTERL and was born with the letters V, A, C, R, and L. We, by the grace of God bypassed the Tracheal Esophageal part. Though Maggie does have a mild form of dysphagia ( so she chokes on things easily).

Our recent surgery coming up is going to be a BIG surgery. It will be several surgeries at once. By doing them at once it will cut down on the amount of anesthesia she'll be exposed to. Does it make me nervous they are going to do so much at one time? You betcha! My fear is if something goes awry we are going to be to busy trying to figure out what the heck is causing the problem. But in the same breath I have to put a little trust in Cincinnati because they do these types of surgeries quite a bit. Much more than most hospitals.

Anyways, this surgery will be the Malone (better way to do enemas ), Mitrofanoff(better way to catherize) , bladderneck with sling ( since she was born with stress incontience ), and her right kidney has to be removed due to the fact it lost its function by the time we actually made it to Cincinnati. It has started to grow cysts on it ,since it no longer function, and is now considered a source for infection and it recently has started to cause pain from time to time. So it needs to come out. The Malone surgery itself will be a bit more involved since she has her 'double colon'. She also has what is called a partial duplication of her colon. Meaning she has two colons. One intersects into the other. Making it like a two lane highway. So they will have to also divert the second colon into the one so that when we do her enemas that she will flush from one colon and not two ( like we are doing now).

So you see, it is very involved and will require more than one doctor to do it all.

In the meantime , since we are awaiting for our surgery date. We are doing some fundraising in the meantime. Traveling for medical care is not cheap at all. We are very fortunate that our insurance will cover the surgery. What insurance does not cover, is the hotel we'll have to stay at until we get accepted into the Ronald McDonald House(even then we'll still have to pay but just not so much money like we will when we stay at the hotel), it won't pay for food, while we wait for our stay at the Ronald McDonald House, and trust me, the Cincinnati Ronald McDonald House is the most POPULAR place in Cincinnati for medical families. They even built more housing but still , its not enough, and we'll be on a waiting list. Knowing that we'll be there in the late spring/early summer means an even MUCH longer wait. I know of families that have been to Cincinnati right now during the winter and it has taken at least 10 days for them to get in. I also know that we will have to go down at least three days or more before the surgery because Maggie has testing to do before her surgery and I requested that we do this all in one trip if possible. So that extends our stay in Cincinnati by three or four more days.

Our insurance does not pay for gas for our vehicle to go down, and to use while down there.

And it doesn't cover any supplies or medications we may need to get while down there. Our insurance is not covered in another state. We learned this when we went to bowel management a few years ago. If there is a specific medication they will want Maggie on in the meantime, or if we have to refill a med that we already have. Ohio pharmacies will NOT accept our PA insurance, none of the pharmacies accept it. We were put in that position while we were down there and we had to start catherizing Maggie and needed a med so that she wouldn't get a UTI. We were not able to get it, went to every pharmacy,even the hospital pharmacy and their pharmacies did not accept our insurance. I really do not want to be put in that position again should we need a very important medication or have to refill the medication that Maggie already takes on a daily basis.

Raise Money Online

So to sum it up this fundraiser is to cover:

1. Hotel lodging
2. Gas for our vehicle to get there (trust us when we say that its NOT cheap to fill up a minivan for a long trip)
3. Food, unfortunately God made us that we need to eat to survive. So its not an option to skip it to save on money.
4. For any new or extra medications or supplies we may need while we are down there. Sadly our insurance does not carry over for these two things while out of state.

On top we are looking to be gone at least 4 to 6 weeks. Maybe longer. It just depends on how well things go, how well things heal, and what the doctors think. It will all depend on Maggie. We look forward to things going smoothly, but in the same breath, will always prepare for the worst of things too. One never knows.

Currently we are running two fundraisers.... An Online Tupperware Party for those of you that are Tupperware fans. They have some great selections for the fundraiser. So feel free to jump on and purchase some of these awesome products. A portion of the proceeds go to helping us reach our goal for our fundraiser.

http://order.tupperware.com/pls/htprod_www/!tw$shop.p_category

Raise Money Online

OR if it takes you to the main page of the Tupperware website. Click Find fundraiser and type in :Tracy Reed

Our second is the Go Fund Me website. This page is set up for those who aren't interested in purchasing Tupperware, and would much rather just donate money.
You can click the big Maggie picture in this blog or the button on the side of our blog.


We always appreciate any help anyone can do or give. Even if you take your time to spread the word around about our fundraiser. Its definitely difficult to do it all yourself. Not by my own wants but because I have to. Please feel free to pass on the links to these fundraisers to your friends, families, local churches, community centers etc. If you would like to create a flyer please be sure to email me first at : reedfamilypa@yahoo.com for permission first.

So we thank anyone who will give of their time or money to help us reach our goal. Of course we'd like to superceed our goal. But to me the amount set is a good one to reach for now.

Winter and Bird Feeders

Wow, its been a while since I last updated on the blog here. My laptop finally died on me and so I don't have the luxury of cuddling up on my big recliner chair in the evening to type. I can only get the typing in when I can because we all share one computer now.

We had a wonderful Christmas and Marilyn was the wonderful recipient of an Ipod Touch by her grandparents. I'll tell you that not only Marilyn gets to enjoy it that's for sure. Our goal though is to save up for an Ipad. I love the Ipod, its small, portable and you can download tons of apps both just for fun, and educational. I love the educational apps though. They really reinforce things we've done for the day, or teach something I am really not good at teaching. Exactly the real reason I would love to get the Ipad because there are writing apps and worksheet apps. Something not made for the Ipod. Anyways we had a wonderful Christmas and now we are in the middle of winter.
I will say that winter really recently has just started in our neck of the woods. Really, really unusual for us in this neck of the woods. We usually start seeing snow in October and don't see the ground until March. Regardless though, its still January and still, the middle of winter which always seems relentless and never ending.

So today for some winter fun we thought we would make some bird feeders for the birds. Granted we don't have any trees next to our apartment building. We do have a picnic table. So the girls made two different types of bird feeders.



The first using orange juice cartons. They had tons of fun smearing peanut butter on them. I had Maggie use gloves because I'm not sure if she still has her peanut allergy. So its better to be safe than sorry that's for sure.


Once they were done smearing the peanut butter, they rolled their orange juice containers in the bird seed, which we just bought a cheap bag at Walmart. Nothing special.

What we got were bird feeders that look just like this!



The girls were very proud of their feeders they made today.


After that they were ready and waiting to take them outside. Now the waiting begins. To see if any birds come our way to feed off of them.

Little Reader's Chinese

Hello everyone. Its been a while since I last wrote on the blog that's for sure.
I just wanted to hop on and share with everyone the next round of Brillkids educational products that we've enjoyed using.

Little Reader's Chinese program is brought to you by Little Reader, the program we've been using with Maggie since completing Your Baby Can Read a year ago.
I must say we were very excited to jump in and give the Chinese program a try, as I've always wanted to teach my girls a foreign language.

I grew up in a house where Polish was spoken by my father , but was only spoken when he was with his family. I am familiar with the language when I hear it but never learned to actually speak it. So to teach my daughters to learn to speak something other than English is exciting for sure.

Since Mandarin Chinese seems to be offered as a language course in the private high schools in our area I decided this may give Maggie and also my other girls some exposure so should they decide to learn to speak it later on it may come a bit easier to them.

Little Reader Chinese
In order to use Little Reader Chinese you first my own the Little Reader program. The Chinese program is set up pretty much the same as Little Reader in that you recieve up to 12 months worth of lessons , that cover 334 categories, containing 3576 words, 2768 images, 5232 pronunciation files, 1138 picture audio and sound effects, and over 520 video clips. Just like Little Reader, Little Reader Chinese lessons comes with 3 professionally recorded voices, 3-5 quality images, 2-4 picture audio (word commentaries or sound effects), videos to better illustrate certain categories, such as animals and action words, and stories.
Little Reader Chinese is set up in Mandarin and comes in both Tradional and Simplified Chinese. I'm still learning the differences between the two and really there isn't much difference other than location of where you would live in China.

The program is set up with three native speakers. It also contains a phonics component that teaches them how to read pinyin and how to listen to the different sounds.

Our experience with the Little Reader Chinese

My girls were definitely ready to dive in and give it a try. After all I've downloaded some of the slides of Chinese on Little Reader and they've always enjoyed it.
I will say that my daughter do enjoy hearing the language but picking it up is another story I guess. Because no one in our home speaks Mandarin Chinese and its not a language you hear everyday I'm finding Maggie isn't picking it up as fast as she learned how to read. With that said though I think we'll continue to press on because the more they hear it the more they learn. I know after watching multiple Dora the Explorer cartoons that Maggie has picked up Spanish words. Though she doesn't speak in Spanish , she is at least learning the words, making them familiar to her.

I did get a small clip video of Maggie listening in on the Chinese. Though she isn't saying much I'm hoping she is at least absorbing some of it in while she's quite.

I will definitely say it doesn't have anything to do with the product either. The program is top notch and the voices are clearn to hear. I think that for learning a different language to be successful I'm thinking they really need to hear it all of the time. I know the one thing about the program that has been tough for us is that even though they give us the word in Chinese, there is a picture and the reader gives a sentence and we have no idea other then then the word we just heard , what the voice is saying. If there were only some subtitles or something so we know what all the other words are. But then maybe as time goes on and we go through the program even more , maybe it will all blend in together and make sense.

I definitely recommend this program to anyone who wants to teach their children Chinese, or even just wants at least the exposure to the program. It is fun for a child that is very visual and likes to hear the sound of the language. Since Maggie enjoys the sound and it sometimes makes her giggle. I guess we'll press on further and see what happens. I'll have to update further down the road to see how we do with it.

As for now , Little Reader Chinese is being enjoyed. Even if we aren't understanding everything that is said in the slides. Even if Maggie and my other daughters learn a few words it will definitely be worth using.

Now with all of this said I'm not running a giveaway on the product. But did find a website with someone who is if your interested in giving Little Reader Chinese a try:
http://figur8.net/baby/2011/12/02/little-reader-chinese-review-and-giveaway/#

Brillkids Little Reader review and Giveaway

Brillkids, what can I say? This product really does produce, and does what it claims to do. I know that there are many out there who believe that teaching young children to read before school age (generally 5 or 6yrs of age) isn't a good thing, and this review isn't about debating this issue. What I do want to share is a really great product that truly produces results in teaching infants/toddlers and young children to read.

Our journey began when my youngest at the age of 3 saw a commercial for Your Baby Can Read. As any skeptical parent who never met a baby that could read I took the infomercial with a grain of salt. Thinking it was another money scam out on the market and I wasn't going to pay for that.
Fast forward to today. Last December (2010) we were shopping at Walmart and we found a lone Your Baby Can Read on the shelf and thought we'd give it a try, and we did. What I saw was nothing short than miraculous. My 4yr old was reading words that not even my 7yr old could read at the time and she loved every minute of it! Maggie blew through the program in little as almost 2 months and she wanted more. Of course Your Baby Can Read was a precursor, a starting point if you will, and in that time I learned my baby girl is very much a visual spatial learner. This is why she picked it up so well and so quickly.

After completing the Your Baby Can Read I went on a search to see if there was more, anything else I could use to continue on with what we started.
Sure enough there was! I found Brillkids, and all I can say is wow!
I wasn't sure if Maggie was going to enjoy the format of learning words off of a computer versus having first learned them off of the television. So I thought we'd give it a trial run with Brillkids trial of their Little Reader software.
Maggie enjoyed and continues to enjoy Brillkids.

We love the Powerpoint features of the program

_

and even the extra add on of being able to download educational videos onto the Brillkids Little Reader and Maggie gets to sing along.


We love the printing out of the flashcards so we can practice words away from the computer as well.

_
What have I learned using Brillkids Little Reader? That this is a great product for young children , babies and infants.Its marketed to those that have infants and toddlers but works just as well for families who have young children (ages 4 and up) wanting to learn to read but just aren't getting the concept of phonics down. This was one area Maggie had difficulty with. We were going through the notorious cccccc..aaaaaa...tttt? What does that say? Maggie: ccccccc.....aaaaa...ttt. Frustration set in. She just wasn't hearing what she was sounding out. Phonics does take a good deal of auditory learning and if your child isn't an auditory learner then this is where frustration with reading begins.
Once she was able to see and hear the words it made much more sense to her and she was able to see the phonics patterns so she started figuring out words herself.
Its a great product for young children ( I'm talking 4 and above) if they are visual learners. That, yes, they do include phonics ( for those phonics fanatics out there) but in a more visual way rather then the old fashion, " Let's sound out each letter way."
I definitely can't be happier with Brillkids Little Reader, and neither can Maggie. Little Reader gets a two thumbs up in our house. So what are you waiting for? Give it a try now!

Our end result ( a rare reading by Maggie Reed, of the Little Red Hen)



Okay, so are you ready to try out Little Reader Semester 1 for yourself?


To enter the Giveaway: 1 entry per post..(this will give you 6 entries)

1. Follow Homeschool Lite

2. Go to Brillkid's website and post one thing that you learned or liked on their website.

3. Post this Giveaway on Facebook ( leave your Facebook name)

4. Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter (leave your Twitter name)

5. Follow Homeschool Lite by email ( the bar is on the right hand side)

6. Share this Giveaway on your blog

This Giveaway will expire on October 14, 2011!!!!!

Brillkids has given me the product to try and use with my daughter. They in no way paid for my opinion, it is my own.

Terms and Conditions of the Giveaway:
The winner will have 48 hours to respond to email or another winner will be chosen.
Fulfillment is through another party. I am not liable for missing prizes._

Giveaway is now closed!!!
Congratulations to the McElwain Family for winning the 1st Semester Brillkids Giveaway!

A Rough Start

Ever wonder why some of your best laid plans go out the door? I know I do.
This year is not going the way I wished it would. As I sit here and read other blogs about happy families that have found exactly what they want and its working great. I'm finding that I'm drawing in air and taking a deep breath and sighing it all out.

I'm finding my days filled with a 5 yr old telling me that she doesn't want to be homeschooled, that its no fun, and she wants to be back at school with her friends. Why do Hannah and Katie get to go and not me? I get to hear everyday.
I try so hard to keep things light and fun for her. Today we made an awesome recipe of playdough that used jello in the recipe. It was by far the best recipe for playdough I've ever made by far. Definitely gives you that store bought playdough without it being store bought. I have to say that I found it on Pinterst by the way.



We've done lots of arts and crafts. So don't think that I'm pushing my 5yr old all on academics. That's not it at all.
Last week we made a fun rainbow out of fruit loops. Talked about the colors (even though she knows them already), but talked about the colors that were in the rainbow. She surprised me and already knew that. But it turned out really cute.

Tomorrow, if its not raining I plan on making some sidewalk paint.
So really we're doing fun stuff that is fun to do. But for some reason Maggie just isn't so happy about it. Maybe with some time things will change.
But I just can't seem to hit my stride yet with any of this.

Even getting Marilyn excited about learning has been tough. She's been doing her work but its been tough for me to keep track of what she's finishing and what she isn't. We're using Christian light for her for Math and Language Arts. Still using the Stories of the Saints which by the way really does have excellent stories in it. Just hard for me to keep track of what she's doing because she thinks she can blow through the comprehension questions and skip the activities , which can range from drawing illustrations of what she read in the story, to writing reports. She just isn't taking her time on any of it.

I'm beginning to wonder if my heart is in any of this. Maybe not having them all home at the same time is affecting me and the girls more than I know.
I just know that this year has not gotten off to a great start for me and I wish I could make it better.

Dolphin Tale Giveaway

Its time for those giveaways again. They are so fun and you just never know if you might win something cool.

Dolphin Tales is opening up September 23 Nation wide and the mission is for everyone to get out and watch a good wholesome movie.
The neat part is that the two main characters are homeschooled. Finally, a movie about children who are homeschooled.

So check out the I Take Joy blog and enter for a cool giveaway package and get out, see a family oriented movie without violence, junk or twaddle.