Disney Dining

Our countdown clock is down to 34 days until we leave for our annual Disney World vacation. We are getting so excited! Disney World is truly like our second home. Since we are annual passholders we receive newsletters and e-mails every so often with updates and new things and today I received an e-mail talking about how you can now make dining reservations online. I think this is one of the smartest things Disney has done lately. I hate calling for Disney Dining Priority seating because the call wait times are so long. So I decided to check it out this morning and the first couple of times I put dates in it gave me what I wanted plus other places that were available also. The third time I entered a date and it told me that the server was too busy because of the popularity of the site. UGH! Hopefully Disney will get all of the bugs out and it will be a very useful tool for our future visits to Disney. Good luck and I hope this proves to be a great asset for all of us Disney addicts out there. Click on the link to the new site here: Disney Dining site.

School Already?

Where did the summer go? It seems like we should still be enjoying our lazy days of summer, but we are  officially on Day 3 of school. So far so good. Everybody likes their curriculum so far. I want to share a little about how I prepare for the new school year.

We use switched on Schoolhouse Grade 6 for ‘Blondie’, Abeka Academy, video streaming grade 3 for ‘Red’ and Abeka Academy, video streaming grade 1 for ‘Dimples’. All of Blondies work is on the computer, no books except for what I assign her for reading.  Both Red and Dimples have a ton of books and the stack looks so daunting to them, you know we’ve all heard it before ” I have to do all of that”?. So I decided a couple of years ago with Red that I needed a new system, something that also cuts my prep time every morning down too. So I take all pages out of the books and compile them into individual lessons and put them in file folders. I do all of this over the summer so that I will have it all done by the time school starts. They prefer to see the much smaller stack of  5 or 6 pages instead of 6 or 7 books. 

When they complete their papers I file them into a folder labeled by months and each childs name and put them in a rubbermaid file box. When it comes time for our Supervising Teacher visit I am prepared with everything they have done in one neat  file box.

Having this all prepared before our school year starts gives me more time each day to help them  or to spend extra time reading together each day.

Another thing I find important is to read a daily devotion together before they start their lessons for the day. It just starts our day on the right note and gets them thinking.

Why?

So today is one of those days where I can’t seem to understand anything. We have a little 9 yr old friend that was diagnosed with the same type of brain tumor that Blondie had. Not only has he been fighting it his whole life, but he now has been diagnosed with leukemia. Leukemia, more than likely from the chemo that he received at the age of two for the brain tumor. Why?? He has fought his whole life, for his life. He has had multiple surgeries,multiple rounds of chemo and radiation. The side effects at this point are so debilitating that he cannot do most of what a nine year old boy should be able to do. Why??? I just can’t seem to grasp this whole thing. They are so much like our family and have been one of the best gifts we received from living this brain tumor nightmare! I so badly want to change this for them, just take it all away. I look to God for the answers, and I know in time He will show me, sometimes I just have trouble listening. Why do these beautiful loving children have to suffer so much? No matter what he is going through he somehow manages to keep a smile on his face. We can all learn so much from these little warriors, if we can just listen.