Seeing Creation again for the first time

In our homeschool, I think history is everybody's favorite subject. After lunch we all get comfy in the living room and I read to everybody. This year we're covering The Ancients, and it's even more fascinating than the last time we covered it--maybe because the kids are older?

We drew out a chart showing the ages of all the first fathers from Adam on. It was really amazing how long these men lived, and how great an overlap there was in their lives. Did you know that Adam died only 117 years before Noah? I was curious if any of Noah's forefathers perished in the flood. Apparently they all died just before it came. Some of these guys knew their great-great-great-great grandfathers (assuming they were living nearby). Imagine the knowledge and wisdom that could be passed down! And I'd never noticed before that Noah's three sons were old guys when the flood came. They were 100--and had no children yet! Didn't Abraham and Sarah think about that when they were old and having a child for the first time?

We read a book called Life in the Great Ice Age, which is a fictional book about an 11-year-old boy living in the Ice Age that followed the flood. According to the Institute for Creation Research, the effects of the flood had dramatic affects on the climate for several hundred years.

One thing the study made me realize was that there were a lot more people on the earth than I realized. I've always pictured the population as pretty slim. But if you read through all the lineage from Adam on, they were hundreds of years old when they had the son who gets the mention. Who knows how many sons & daughters were born before him? And depending on when Cain killed Abel, it could have been several hundred years later, when the earth was quite populated. That explains why Cain was worried about everyone being a threat, as he complained. And I don't know that I'd ever noticed before that it says Adam and Eve had many other sons and daughters.

Surgery date!

Over a year ago, not too long after our son Peter (age 10) got his second cochlear implant, the first implant from 2000 started acting funny. He'd get very upset and refuse to wear it. Voices sounded like fax machine bird chirps. So we experimented with changing out the processor and giving him a new "map" (that's the unique computer program loaded on his processor). When we didn't get anywhere, we tried one last ditch effort to trouble shoot by having the audiologist put him on yet another processor. He could detect tones, but couldn't make out any speech. The manufacturer, Advanced Bionics, agreed to cover the cost of a replacement. The good news is that the implant he'll be getting is a newer model than the implant he received in 2000, thus better technology, clearer & crisper sound, and more "cup holders," as my husband calls them (bells & whistles in the design and storage containers). Peter's so excited! Only 33 more days to his October 1 surgery date! Woo-hoo!

"Business" cards

Now that my sweet husband has created business cards for me that include a blogspot url, I guess I better think up something to say and start posting! I've wanted business cards for some time now because people I often have people ask me for info on homeschooling or leads on how to help a hearing impaired child get help (therapy, etc). So now I have these cute little cards with web sites on them like www.YouCanHomeschool.org and www.HearIndiana.org.

I get a lot more inquiries about homeschooling, of course, but enough deaf ed questions to merit including links on my cards.

My creative husband coined a new term Hear Indiana is using: Doing Deaf Differently. That's what we're doing! We're giving our kids the opportunity to live independently, not depending on an interpreter for everything--especially in those critical moments of danger. (We also recognize we need some sign language at the pool, in the morning before the equipment is turned on, and so forth.) We like English. We like French. We like Latin. We like ASL. We're doing deaf differently.

Hello Ruth, welcome

To your own website. Smootch.