10/18/13 Mother's Journal

This week in our home and life:

In my life this week.....

My cousin, who is about five years older than I am, is physically disabled and has COPD (a lung disease caused by smoking) and is always on oxygen. On Tuesday, getting home after a doctor's appointment, after getting out of the car fell and injured himself so badly that it was touch and go that he might pass away that night. He survived the night, and had an up and down week that included being put on a trach tube, having surgery to reconstruct his hip, and staying in ICU. Yesterday I finally got to go visit him. They were able to take the tube out of his airway while we were there. We had a good visit, although he couldn't talk - he still had the tube most of our visit, and after they removed it he was on a "positive airway", which made talking like trying to shout out a car window at 90 mph. Mostly he wrote down things and we read them and answered what he had written. But it was a good visit. I hadn't seen him since 2006. It was a long drive to get there, but I hope I don't wait so long to see him again.

In our homeschool this week...... 

J-Boy worked on Notgrass America the Beautiful for History, Geography, Literature, Bible, Creative Writing; for Math he used IXL Math and began Horizon's Algebra; in Science we worked on Apologia Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics; for Grammar and more Writing he worked in Bridgeway's English; for Spelling and Vocabulary he has been working through words I programmed into VocabularySpellingCity (from the SAT Vocabulary list for college prep); and we worked on French using French Essentials.

  

Places we went and people we saw......

Well... we kinda hunkered down and didn't go anywhere or see anyone because we had a lot on our plate. J-Boy had his Boy Scout Court of Honor on Monday night and received three merit badges and received his rank advancement to 2nd Class. And I wasn't counting this weekend, but I should -- he just got back from a two-night camping trip at Antietam National Battlefield. I didn't go; that's why I wasn't thinking of it because it wasn't a place "we" went, but rather a place where "he" went.

What I am cooking......
Well, I'm posting my menu plan in my next blog entry. Last week included beef stew, which was yummy. We also got to have a date night when J-Boy was camping. We drove that long drive to visit my cousin in the hospital, and after that we went out to dinner and dessert, which we don't get to do as a couple all that often.

What I am reading.....

I'm working on At Home in Dogwood Mudhole, by Franklin Sanders; Redemption, by Mike Wilkerson; and in my pile but not read this week are Boundaries with Teens by Cloud and Townsend as well as White Gold Wielder by Donaldson.
 

Projects I am working on.....
Doll clothes for Samantha (American Girls Doll) and baby hats for my charity.

Something I am eyeing......
A safe cover to protect my Kindle.

Something new I learned......
Way more than I wanted to know about ways my efforts at Parental Controls can be hacked when I'm spend hours trying to keep boundaries up to keep my little computer-user safe.

Questions for all you smart mommas out there.....
Are you still reading this entry, way down here at the bottom of my blog entry?

A couple more photos from our week....
Sorry, that'll have to wait. I took video of the Court of Honor, and it's probably long and boring. My other photos are on my phone, but it's off charging. So for now, no photos.

Thanks for reading!