A Week, Briefly (5/31/21)

 It was a long, hard week.

 

For no actually good reason.

 

I mean, there were several little things, but nothing earth-shattering.

We caught a stomach bug--lots of barf!

 

My stove-top produced an astonishing fireworks show and then died.  The repair guy confirmed it--no hope.  Time to shop for a new one.

The dryer died.

 

I fed Lil' K something that caused a terrible allergic reaction.  We didn't know, and his mom says it was not our fault--she didn't know either!  His face swelled up, and his lips blistered, and he cried and scratched.  We called his mom, and she ran him to the emergency room.

(I guess that event was kind of earth-shattering.)

We jumped from constant rain and cooler temperatures to 80 degrees and 99% humidity, so we're all hot and sticky all of the time.

But for each of these, there is a reason to be glad!

The stomach bug seems to have passed.

We have a stove in our basement kitchen, so I've been able to cook for my family with hardly a wrinkle.  In addition, I'm going to get a dreamy gas stove-top to replace the smooth surface electric top that died.

Sir Walter Scott ordered $20 worth of parts and fixed our dryer better than ever.

 

Lil' K got a dose of Benadryl and a steroid shot, and he's doing just fine.  It was a Lara Bar that caused the reaction, and there are only 3 or 4 ingredients that could have caused it . . . cashews being the most likely culprit.  We can avoid cashews!

The sun shone every day, so we could dry our clothes outside.  It was fun to hang them up together and then gather them up all stiff and warm from the sunshine.  Plus, 80 degrees is nothing compared to the hundreds that probably await us next month!

 

With the new lifting of mask mandates in our area, we were able to have our traditional Memorial Day breakfast and patriotic program at church.  It was raining cats and dogs, so we had to have it inside.  Here are some of our cute primary children singing God Bless America.  They look a bit rag-tag here, but they sang their little hearts out!

The kids found this great big toad one day in our yard.  They tried to catch him and build a habitat for hm, but he was too clever for us.

The Storyteller is an outstanding read about the power of story to feed us in mind and spirit and how it is as important as being nourished in body.  I might actually buy it as a gift for our family.  All of our reads this week were excellent.

We had a dance rehearsal at a park in the morning--dance is starting up again!  We were 10 minutes late getting home for NASA's International Space Station resupply launch.  Little Princess just cried; she had so looked forward to the launch!  However, I was sure there would be something to watch, so we logged in anyway.  Hurrah!  Even though it was a live stream, there was rewind button, so she got to watch the launch over and over again!  Then she proceeded to watch hours of NASA "chatter."

Our garden has been a joy to us all.  The lettuces have finally bolted, so we're feeding several of them to the chickens each day to clear garden space for cucumbers and zucchini.  The kids eat the strawberries as they pick them.  It's also mulberry season, and the kids' clothes are all stained with mulberry juice because they pick and eat them by the hour.

So much rain = mushrooms!  These two picked and studied several examples.

This is unposed--The Munchkin really did fall asleep this way during nap time one afternoon. :)

I never get tired of watching my psychologically fragile children care for other children.

This is Ladybug reading to younger siblings.  She so rarely gets to be a leader in our family, and I'm realizing that needs to be remedied.

We have yet to change our school days.  We need to keep going to meet state requirements, and so far the days are not yet blisteringly hot enough to change our school hours to the afternoon.  Now that splash parks and pools are open, we might change things up a bit.

 

Belle is still working on Advanced Writing with American Literature.  I spent time searching old blog posts to recreate a high school transcript.  How grateful I am that I keep records in more than one place!

One of our darling dance friends graduated from homeschool high school this week.  Belle was invited to dance with her in the recital she chose in place of a graduation ceremony.   What a fun way to celebrate her homeschool journey!

Nature Angel is so close to being done with Language Arts and Koine Greek!  She wrote a sonnet this week.  At first she nearly cried because it was so hard, but I encouraged her to keep at it, and she did.  By the end of the week, she was catching a vision of what to do and how to do it, and she actually laughed and danced in the kitchen when she did it.  Sometimes doing a hard, unpleasant task can be so, so, so rewarding!

Nature Angel made this really cool hopscotch that kept everyone busy for hours one afternoon.

Little Princess is immersed in the NASA Youtube channel, books about woman scientists, and classic literature.  Required school or no required school, this girl is deeply in love with her personal studies.

Ladybug is just loving MLFLE.  She learned how to find the perimeter of a square, rectangle, and triangle this week.

Mister Man is doing double math lessons right now in order to finish his book sooner rather than later.  It turns out that I wasn't keeping track of what he completed accurately enough (he forgets to date his work, and I failed to demand it).  I'm keeping closer tabs these days.

Brother is agitated and defiant a lot these days.  He fell apart over several math lessons last week--something that is totally out of character for him.  I explained to him that as he'd started part way through level 2, and now he was over half way through level 3, he'd done a full year of math and could take a break.  He had to think it over, but this week, he willingly traded math for grammar.  He's doing 3 grammar lessons a day, and he's acing it.  

Beowulf's most recent med change was a disaster.  I've got him off all but his bedtime meds, and we learned about his metabolism genetic testing results.  There was little of note concerning his ADHD or DMDD.  Most of his enzyme irregularities have nothing to do with meds that treat these concerns, but we will have to be careful if he ever needs to be treated for HIV/AIDS or needs blood thinners.  In the meantime, we are trying to survive each day with as much focus and as few angry outbursts as possible.  This means that he's not doing language arts, and progress in his math lessons has slowed down again.

Lola's behaviors are challenging.  Every day I make a note to get her an assessment appointment, and every night I face palm that I never made that call.  

Baymax is reading, narrating, and progressing in arithmetic.  I could have him just stop because he's most decidedly had a complete Kindergarten year, but it's good for us to spend some scheduled time together each day, so we just keep doing a little at a time.

We're starting to be committed to a plan for our next Academic Year.