W-E-D-N-E-S-D-A-Y an ACRONYM. (or not.)

W - We're going to physical therapy today to see if my son can be taught to walk with crutches. After seeing him on them the first few days after he broke his ankle, I have my doubts, but we'll see. The therapist, on the phone, said "It will only take about 15 minutes" but she hasn't met this kid yet. :-P

E - Eating is interesting when you're trying to go gluten free. I think I may have accidentally cross contaminated my pecan pie (I'm practicing for Easter!) because my daughter was making a peach cobbler at the same time and I may have used the same measuring cup or something without thinking. She tries to watch me, but she's only one person! So anyway, yesterday afternoon I started feeling bad, aching all over and this morning I woke with some digestive symptoms. I'll spare you all the details.

D- Okay, I don't have anything for D.

I was going to do an acronym, but I'm stumped by the 2 D's in Wednesday. Funny, since my name, my husband's name and all 3 of my kids start with D and our homeschool is named 3-D Academy. I don't use their real names on this blog though, so that leaves me with no D words for Wednesday.

I did have one for "A" though. Assessments. I'm going to use the TAKS tests from 2009 to test my kids this year. http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index3.aspx?id=3839&menu_id=793 (Blogger won't let me make that a link for some reason). Every couple of years I do this and it helps me know what the kids need to work on.

Tomorrow is April fools day and I'm trying to think of some mild pranks to play on the kids. I don't like to do anything remotely harmful. One year I put green food coloring in the milk. One year I gave them fake school work from Family Fun. http://familyfun.go.com/april-fools-day/ I'm going to check their web site out and see if they have anything fun this year.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about education, what I'd like to be doing in our school and what we actually do. I'll try to post on all that when I get my thoughts more organized. Maybe in an acronym. Or maybe not. :-P

Updates on a few things.

My oldest son is definitely having ankle surgery, it's this Friday, yes, Good Friday, so he's probably not going to have the best Easter weekend.  Still, we need to get it done and we need to do it when the surgeon can do it.  I don't really want to wait anymore, he's had this going on since November and that's long enough.  I need to try and see if I can get him in this week for physical therapy for crutches/gait training to see if he can learn to use crutches.  That should be interesting. 

We didn't do school today.  Yes, again.  We went to the dentist this morning for our long awaited appointments and they took half the day.  At the dentist's office, my back went into a spasm and I was miserable, so I just tried to get myself better this afternoon and didn't make the kids do school.  I'm really not even sure why.   I guess I was focused on my back pain and not them.  Anyway, I took some tylenol and sat in my wonderful chair for a while, took a nap and was rejuvenated.   I went to the grocery, did some Easter shopping, visited my mom and got home just in time for work. 

I've just been busy, busy.  In the last 4 days, I've had to work and I had a party, a women's luncheon, a wedding shower (and shopping for it from the registry, which takes longer than regular shopping), a concert (I didn't attend, but had to take my son and pick him up at midnight last night which involved about 40 minutes of driving each time), a dentist appointment and about 3 trips to Kroger.   No wonder I needed a nap this afternoon.  :-) 

At least I'm moving.

I may not be getting as much done as I should, but I'm getting a few things done.  A couple of weeks ago (?) I made a list of the spring cleaning and home repair things I wanted done.  I'm not sure how many things were on the list.  It was on index cards, 1 for each room of the house and outside, so let's see, 9 cards and the laundry room card is done, done, done!!  We started doing some outside things today, getting the deck ready to stain and cleaning a little bit in the boy's room.  I'm encouraged, anyway.  It's progress.

Homeschooling today.

We didn't get a lot of school done today.  I had the kids do their priorities and then we spent the afternoon working on the laundry room project.  I just really NEED to work on the house right now.  I don't know if it is a spring thing, somekind of female thing or what, but I just NEED the house to be in better order.  We got a lot done in the laundry room today.  Now I just need my husband to put up some hooks and shelves because he seems to be the only one that can put things on the wall and have them actually stay up there.  I do feel better having the work done.  We may be doing biology and grammar right on through July and August but hey, we can do that.  We homeschool for flexibility right?

NO!

This morning my mom's back specialist called and said that her appointment had been rescheduled from tomorrow until April 7.  I spent a long, long time on the phone 3 weeks ago getting her appointments scheduled with both specialists on the same day and now one of them cancelled.  It seems he scheduled a surgery at the same time as her appointment.  Does anyone else remember the Seinfeld episode where they are supposed to hold a rental car for him because he has a reservation?  At some point, the clerk says "I know what a reservation is" and Jerry Seinfeld says, "I don't think you do!".  That's how I feel.  Do they not know what an appointment is?  I am so frustrated with them!  Now we can't get both appointments with both specialists on the same day, although I made several calls trying to set that up and messed up her one remaining appointment tomorrow in the process ...

I already knew it, but if I didn't know it, I would have learned something.

This was my daughter's comment yesterday after 4H when I asked her if she'd learned anything. 

Not an auspicious beginning to my day.

Acid reflux woke me at 5:00 a.m. because I had forgotten to take my Prilosec in the window of time that I have to take it.  It has to between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.  for some reason.  I took it at 11:00 but it was too late.  So anyway, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. feeling pretty yucky.  I took some Tums but it didn't work all that well.  Since I was up, Max decided that he needed to go outside (of course).  I put him out on the lead and sat down to read a book, since there was no point in trying to sleep.  After about half an hour, I opened the front door and called him and heard him whimper.  He gets the lead caught in something occasionally.  I always hope it's not at 5:30 am, but sometimes it is.  So I put on a pair of flip flops, grabbed a flashlight and headed out into the pre-dawn darkness.  After a couple of minutes, I located him wrapped up in some briars at the side of the yard.  I'm not sure how he even stretched the lead over that far.  He was very well tangled I couldn't get the lead out of the briars without unhooking him first.  As soon as he was loose, he was GONE.  He ran off to have an adventure in the neighborhood, while I finished untangling the leash.  He was gone for a couple of hours.  I was sick for a couple of hours.  Finally, he came up on the back deck and I got him back in and went back to sleep for a while.

Not a great beginning for the day, but I guess it could be worse.

Real Life 101 Is Not An Elective.

We all have to take this class.

Lesson 1 - Everybody makes mistakes.
 
Today we showed up at the dentist at 10:00 a.m. which is early for us (since I worked until nearly midnight the night before) only to find out that our appointments are next week.  So next Monday, we have to go again.

Lesson 2 - Decisions have to be made, even when you don't know what you're doing half the time.  


We did make it to the orthopedist's office and it was the correct date and time.  We talked to him for a long time but it was kind of a confusing talk.  Apparently, there is swelling of the bone marrow and what we thought was free floating chip of bone is kind of next to the other bone but not in the right place, so he does need surgery.  However, if we want to decline the surgery we can and the ankle will stay about like it is or maybe get a little better, maybe not.  (See, I told you it was confusing.)  Anyway, if he does the surgery, he'll go in arthroscopically so the incision won't be very big and then he'll take out the chip and drill some holes in the bone to help it heal.  Then oldest son will have to be completely non-weight-bearing, not even touching a toe to the floor for 6 weeks.  My son is the most hopeless ever on crutches so he'll probably have to use a walker.  That will be kind of weird.  We're going to sleep on this decision, but we'll probably go with the surgery.  I don't want his ankle to always hurt.  If he is completely opposed to it when we talk tomorrow, I'll consider his opinion though.  He's almost 18 and it is his ankle.

Lesson 3:   You can't go back in time and make accidents not happen.

This is what oldest son was wishing today.
 
Lesson 4:   Be flexible, creative and take initiative.  Don't be afraid of work.
 
While we were gone, the other 2 kids worked on the laundry room without being told to!  We're trying to re-organize it and paint it.   We do kind of a "family closet" kind of thing in there.  My youngest went through his clothes, sorted and put most of the winter ones away.  My daughter is working on the painting and I have given her permission to do whatever she wants with the paint we have, so she's doing a tree mural in there.  It looks good. I don't have any decorating preferences for that room, I just need it to be a bit neater and better organized and able to store a lot of things. 

Lesson 5:  Sometimes things are hard.

Our church wants to put a clock in the sanctuary in honor of my Dad.  The also want to have another memorial service and dedicate the clock in his memory at that time.  I think it's very nice and all, but I don't think I can do another memorial service.  I almost didn't survive the first one.


Lesson 6:  Treat others with kindness and be willing to forgive.

I got up this morning with a horrible backache and quickly developed an awful headache to go with it.  Between the "dentist appointment" and the doctor appointment, I sat in my comfy chair for a nap which is sometimes all that will work for my headaches.  There was a Spiderman blanket in my chair so I covered myself with that and went to sleep.  Youngest son saw that I was using his blanket and came over and grabbed it, waking me up (he says he didn't know I was asleep), so I had to go to the doctor with my headache and my back in spasm, when both, I think would have probably been helped with the nap.  I was very angry when awakened and grounded him for life.  He has since apologized and I have forgiven him, but he's still grounded for at least 2 weeks.  That's not how our family treats each other.  Period. 

So does this count as a school day?  I think we all learned something ...