County Fair - Day One and Counting

County Fair.

I can vividly remember taking the family to our county fair every summer. We would see the sights, have some food, and invariable end up wandering the aisles of the livestock barn...wondering what it would be like to own a couple of animals...wondering how much fun it must be...wondering how that would ever be possible based on our living in a major metropolitan city.

Now fast forward to today. It's County Fair time again. But this time, as has been the case for the last six years, we're there not just one day, but six, and not only six days, but six nights as well. All because our little 'wondering' came to be, and our girls bring their 4-H dairy goats to exhibit as well as any other static exhibits they have prepared during the year. It's amazing how things do change.

Without spending the entire 'day one' post on how we got to where we are, let's just dive in to today.

But it really started last Saturday with paining the pen panels that the goats will stay in for the week, and as a 4-H club, decorating the area for the benefit of the visitors to the county fair. There's an amazing amount of background work done by an awful lot of volunteers in order to put together what you see when you visit the livestock barns.

But in getting back to today, the fair opens on a Tuesday each and every year. Our 14-year-old did not have a show today or even barn duty so was free to wander the fair with me and our 9-year-old. And wander we did...through the goat barns to see each and every little goatkid...many, many times. Through the butterfly exhibit four different times.

600+ Monarchs in one tent.

They were everywhere!

This says it all!

We washed our hands with the most wonderful goat soap from the 'soap lady's' exhibit. We spent a lot of time in the pioneer village and Indian camp looking through the exhibits there. We wandered over to the the OMSI exhibit. And I believe all that was before lunch back at our campsite. Then we of course had to make several trips through the 4-H exhibit hall where the girls had photography exhibits as well as H-Bob's Clover Bud exhibits.

Clover Bud sewing exhibit

Clover Bud Photography exhibit

Clover Bud Expressive Art and Natural Science exhibit

Clover Bud Drawing exhibit

Clover Bud felting and finger knit scarf

There were cool things to see in the Main Pavilion that the various vendors exhibited, plus no day is complete without going through both the rabbit and poultry barns and then on to the beef and swine exhibits. One of H-Bob's favorite shows to watch was the Flying K-9's...a Frisbee and agility demonstration by various herding and rescue dogs. They are talented. Although it seems like it, we haven't seen everything that there is. That's why there's tomorrow, and the next day, and the next...but it's hard to convince a 9-year-old of that at times. County fair for us equals an incredible amount of walking.

H-Bob, sporting our club t-shirt.

Since we are camping, dinner is put together at the campsite...teriyaki chicken, zucchini and onion skewers, and rice. Good and simple.

Yes, home sweet home for the week.

We still have the horses and other goats at home, so I take off each evening to care for them as well as take care of my horse barn duties next door. Our other two kids are at home, so there is dinner to put together for them, laundry, watering, and rounding up what we will need for the next day. It does make for one long day.

But here I am finally trying to chronicle it all after all these years. Someday we won't be in this position, and we'll be back to being spectators...although we'll be all-knowing and more appreciative than ever.  And I do want to remember what it was like.

Do you attend your county fair? What's your favorite part? It would be fun to find out.

Stay tuned...day two should be coming right up.

Breakfast Menu for Visual Learners or Non-Readers

Technology is only as good as the practical use you can apply it to. Right? Not sure where that leaves Facebook...ha ha...but at any rate there are some great concepts out there just waiting to be utilized in creative ways. I hardly consider myself creative, a mimicker for sure, but original thoughts sometimes are few and far between. I have noticed lately since reading up on my dyslexic learner that combining activities will often stimulate both hemispheres of the brain. My most brilliant thought moments can be found while I'm working next door at the barn. This week's light bulb concerns Pinterest.



Pinterest is new to me, and I've only had a little bit of time to figure it out. It's a site where you can 'pin' photos found on the web on 'boards' that you define. Fun to play around with for sure. But practical? Now it is. Enter the visual menu for young kids or visual learners. The menu I have in mind is there to help me remember as well as show H-Bob what gluten and caesin free, low-sugar items we have on hand to eat on her elimination diet. We're trying to focus on 'what there is' as opposed to 'what you can't have'. I'm starting out with breakfast...although there are a few pins on that board that need to go to their own separate GFCF board...lemonade for breakfast? Probably not. Click here to see what's there so far.

Source: sixinthenorthwest.blogspot.com via Connie on Pinterest

Source: s57373.gridserver.com via Connie on Pinterest

You can see that by pinning photos of the cereal we selected or the fruit and granola recipe, that we have our own 'menu' of sorts to get the day started on a fun, positive note now that choices are a little bit limited. Not only can H-Bob see them at a glance, but as the board continues to fill up with GFCF products and links to similar recipes, I will have a reminder as well since my cluttered mind tends to overload at times. A step in the right direction for us I hope.

What fun use have you discovered for Pinterest?

Happy Homemaker Monday - July 18, 2011

I'm linking up today with Diary of a Stay at Home Mom and Happy Homemaker Monday.

The weather in my neck of the woods:

It's is the 60s right now. Forecast is for high 60s and rain AGAIN. (This was taken verbatum from my last post three weeks ago. Not too much progress towards summer here. Though to be honest I think we're supposed to get into the low 70s.)




Things that make me happy:

Our relaxed pace of life for the next few weeks is definitely welcome. Things start to pick up again once County Fair gets closer.

Book I'm reading:

So many since my last post...Overcoming Dyslexia, Disconnected Kids, Brain Allergies, The LCP Connection, The Kid Friendly ADHD Cookbook. Pretty heavy stuff.

What's on my TV today:

Not much as usual.

On the menu for dinner:

Hubby and our nine-year-old spent the last few days camping and brought home pink meat trout. It's a little like poor man's salmon. There's no fishy trout taste at all, so time to get creative with it tonight.

On my To Do List:

I really need to get a handle on the weeds in the garden. This rain and temperatures that encourage weeds has made a mess of things. We also ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO finish cleaning out the goat shed. That becomes my mulch material for the paths between the raised beds in the garden and a great weed suppressant.

New Recipe I tried or want to try soon:

Since we're starting a sugar-gluten-casein free diet for H-Bob to see if that has an impact on her dyslexia and attention, cooking will be real interesting. I've armed myself with several gluten-free flours from Bob's Red Mill and a handful of cookbooks. I am probably dealing with this harder than she will since I feel like I can either cook two batches of things or be creative enough to keep everyone happy with only slight modifications to what her menu needs to be.

In the craft basket:

There are only wishes...

Looking forward to this week:

Our Marion berries are beginning to ripen. With the rain this year, they are fantastically plump. Now if we could only get a little sun to ripen them. I'm itching for a pie...guess it will have a gluten-free crust and ice cream? GF crust, yes; ice cream, no since that is a weakness of H-Bob's, but I did come across a recipe for slightly sweetened whipped coconut milk to replace whipped cream.

Source: cleangreensimple.com via Connie on Pinterest

Tips and Tricks:

I had started to use gallon ziplock bags to bundle up individual craft supplies with instructions taken from Family Fun magazine in a type of kit for H-Bob to grab and work on when I'm involved in something else. They're rather picked through at this point. Time to refresh them. It does a great job of keeping her productively occupied when I can't be there.

My favorite blog post this week:

In my search to learn how to prepare gluten-free foods, I stumbled across this post outlining what is gluten-free, how to use substitutions, what does and doesn't work. Thank you Gluten Free Mommy for sharing your experiences.

Blog Hopping:

Gluten Free Girl

On my mind:

Now that we've diagnosed H-Bob's dyslexia, we will obviously be continuing with her vision therapy, have started following the home sensory-motor correction program in Dr. Melillo's book Disconnected Kids to fire up her connections to the left hemisphere of her brain, are getting going full swing on an elimination diet to figure out her food sensitivities, as well as tackling a phonics intervention program to bring up her reading level. Lots and lots to keep my mind busy for sure.

Devotionals, Scripture Reading, Key Verses:

From my devotional that I have sent to my feed reader daily:

We can trust that God knows what is best for us and He will work to make it happen. When we seek the His will and do things His way, not our own, God will bring about the best outcome possible.

"Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass." - Psalm 37:5

Enjoy your week!

Keeping up with your blog reading

I love reading in the blog-o-sphere. It keeps me centered...inspired...informed...you name it. But some times it takes effort. Through trial and error, this is the system that works for me.



When I come across a blog that I would like to follow and read on a regular basis, I look for an RSS feed icon. That usually takes me straight to where I can choose a feed reader and get started there. I happen to use Google because it seems to be universally available, but that's only my preference. There are many others to choose from as well. Within my Google feed reader, I can set up folders for different categories...home...gluten-free...gardening...homeschool...and have the new posts automatically routed there. Easy enough then to go to a particular folder if I want to see what's been happening at my favorite photography site. That's a big bonus to me over receiving posts by email. And there's always that "Mark all as read" button for those overwhelming weeks you all know about.

But here's the other fantastic thing I do. I have an Instapaper account. This is a nifty, actually ingenious, way to mark things that you find on the web so that you can read them later. I just happen to use it mainly for my RSS feeds. A click of the button, and it is added to my Instapaper account. But it gets even better. Instapaper is also an app. And that means...my inherited iPod from my kids can be synched with Instapaper and always affords me reading material no matter where I am. No wi-fi needed when I'm out and about. Now if I had me an iPhone, I probably wouldn't be so excited about this, but it sure works for those of us who haven't moved up to that level yet. I'm to be found reading through blog posts in a long grocery line, waiting to pick someone up, car rides, just about anywhere. Do I dare say I've been tempted while driving? Well, no...but you could just the same.

The only downside is that while you are reading blog posts on an iPod, it is a little cumbersome to comment on a great post. Sometimes you just want to throw out a little, "Me too!" or "Have you heard about..." or "We're thinking of you." It would obviously require you to have a wi-fi connection and nimble little fingers.

Overall the system works for me. How do you keep current on your reading? Do you just randomly skip across the internet to get your fill? Do you even have time to read blogs? Just curious.

For more great Works for Me Wednesday ideas, visit WeAreThatFamily.com.

It's Dyslexia...So Now What?

The past two weeks have made a mess of my mind...information...opinions...decisions. But I feel I'm on the right track.

Here's the deal. Our nine-year-old H-Bob has lagged a grade or two behind in her reading since the beginning. Writing and spelling have been atrocious. No word attack skills. She's had attention issues. Looking back she never 'got' rhyming. Lessons taught one day were forgotten the next. Math...similar issues. Now that I know, those are hallmark tags of a dyslexic learner. Not the backward letters or writing that I incorrectly had been told were the signs to look for.

On original suspicious that she could have vision tracking problems, we had her tested and eventually enrolled in eye therapy sessions every other week which have helped tremendously. Her ability to perceive...not just physically see...written letters or numbers on a page was in the 10% range. They were amazed she was even reading. Six months later her abilities are vastly improved. But her reading and math have not caught up.

Enter my contact with Raising Spirited Kids, and a comment there on determining whether certain temperaments were exacerbated by learning disabilities portrayed a more accurate definition of dyslexia, and I begin to read some more. After inhaling Overcoming Dyslexia, at H-Bob's next eye therapy appointment I asked her therapists some questions. She ran a few diagnostic tests and confirmed that there were also visual processing deficiencies...in other words dyslexic tendencies. A later component of her therapy will address those. But that wasn't going to address my questions I had now. If we have a diagnosis, I need to know the best way to support the situation.

There seem to be several ways people attack dyslexia.

It's there. Let's find a remediation phonic program and hammer in those phonemes until they're firmly rooted in long-term memory. Good approach. You have to have sound association in order to sound out unfamiliar words. We're now working with Saxon's Phonic Intervention program designed for fourth grade and above.

Let's work around it. I was thoroughly impressed with the information on Dianne Craft's site. Dyslexic learners are extremely right-brained. Let's teach them using materials that appeal to their creative right brained sides and utilize the photographic memory that resides there. This also makes sense. H-Bob expresses many tendencies of an overly dominant right brain...great large motor poor poor fine motor skills; excessively cautious; very visual learner.  I was also intrigued by her Brain Integration theories and nutritional aspects that she writes about.

Control it with diet. Studies have shown that many neurological disorders such as ADHD, autism, and dyslexia can be improved through diet. There may not be food allergies present that cause outward symptoms that come to mind when you think 'allergy' but there can be food sensitivities. Those sensitivities are part of a complex cycle where nutrition absorption is compromised and brain activity is affected. I read Brain Allergies which mainly deals with food sensitivities and psychological issues. At the time it was written, research had not applied it to the epidemic level of kids with ADHD, autism and such but the process by which the brain is affected holds true. I've come across people in my life recently who have restricted their sugar, gluten, and dairy for various reasons and have personally reported tremendous changes. The evidence is too hard to ignore that food sensitivities are real, and it too is a path we should take with H-Bob.

Fix it. Yes, that's right, fix it. I sat and cried as I read Disconnected Kids, The Groundbreaking Brain Balance Program for Children with Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Neurological Disorders. They were describing my child. Very right brained. Disconnected left brain. No communication between the two to process...in her case...reading and writing. The results that have been had with this program which was tailed for home use in this book or performed at their Brain Balance Centers makes you want to shout from the housetops, "You have to try this!"



Here's an excerpt:

These disorders may manifest with different symptoms but they are really one and the same problem: a brain imbalance. There is even a name for it--Functional Disconnection Syndrome, meaning areas in the brain, especially the two hemispheres of the brain, are not electrically balanced, or synchronized. This electrical imbalance interferes with the ability of the two hemispheres to share and integrate information, meaning the brain cannot function as a whole. The result is that a child with a brain imbalance has normal or even unusually good skills associated with the higher-functioning area or side of the brain, and unusually bad skills associated with the underactive area or side of the brain. The problem seems to come about because one side of the brain is maturing at a faster rate than the other. As the child develops, this imbalance becomes more significant and the two hemispheres can never fully function as one. The brain is functionally disconnected. Fix the disconnect--that is, get the immature side of the brain to catch up to the other side--and the symptoms go away. So does the disorder.

We've just started the home version of Dr. Robert Melillo's program, so I cannot say personally that we have achieved success. But I'm positive and hopefully that it will make a difference. There are different facets to his work. One is to physically trigger just the left-brain, in H-Bob's case. (Autistic children have a right-brain disconnect and would work to connect it.) Sensory exercises make that left-brain wake up and communicate. It has become silent in the "use it or lose it" concept after originally becoming unsynchronized during the developing process. The other portion of the program is diet and getting the body nutritionally balanced. Here it is again. Start an elimination diet to figure out if there are food sensitivities and get the system off to a start with a clean slate. Interestingly he writes that these food sensitivities will leave once the brain hemispheres are reconnected. The last component is a Behavior Modification Plan which to be honest I haven't absorbed completely yet. It deals with appealing to the deficient side to reward/punish, once again to stimulate the hemisphere that needs to reconnect rather than continue to build the dominant side.

So...there's a lot here. We've started our sensory motor exercises. We've initiated our no-sugar week while keeping our food diary before starting the elimination diet next week. An boy oh boy, there's some research to be done there. I'm in a panic wondering what in the world there will be left to feed poor H-Bob. We're continuing our vision therapy. We are going to start the phonics intervention program.

There will be tears...over no-sugar items already. Next week might...no WILL be...ugly as well. I am going to need the patience of ten thousand saints and the prayers of a multitude to get through this. But we will. And the results are bound to be worth it.

It's your turn. Advice? Comments?