Not much.

There is not much going on this week and it has been GREAT ... a much needed laid-back kind of week.  The cold that my oldest son brought home has made its way through the younger set.  My oldest was well enough to go see grandma yesterday in her new facilty and it was a pretty decent visit.  She is still confused as to where she is, but when we walked in, she was sitting in her room, with her roommate, reading and did not seem to be upset about anything, so that was good.  We gave my son a tour of the place.

The kids have been trying to get over the cold, reading and watching a little TV, mostly reading and it has been really quiet around here and that has been a nice change.  Our phone has been doing that thing it did a while ago, where it rings and it is a long, long ring and when you pick it up, it is just static.  It's annoying, but since my nerves are not completely on edge like they have been most of the year, it is not bothering me quite as much.

My youngest son's school has gotten a bit derailed by this cold and he's not finished yet, but he expects to be today.  We'll see, I guess.

So now I have 2 homeschool graduates and only 1 student for the next 2 years.  He has made a few decisions about his schooling.  He wants to take a musical instrument such as steel drums or violin (not sure why these particular ones) and wants German to be his language study.  Fine with me.  I won't teach them, I'll just find something he can use to teach himself.

If you have a dog for a hood ornament. ...

You might be a redneck.

We came home from shopping to find Piper lying on the car, like that's a normal thing for a dog to be doing ... 

What to do, what to do?

Now, what to do with the summer?  We've made a list of things we need to accomplish.  I have a ton of phone calls to make, I need to work on getting my mom's VA benefits and just a bunch of things.  Now that mom's life has settled down a little (I pray) I have a lot of doctors appointments and things I need to actually go to.  I've been doing a lot of rescheduling due to 1 crisis after another.  It's been very frustrating and stressful and I am hopeful that this summer will be a time of getting things done, seeing friends, enjoying my whole family being in the same house.  I also hope that we (meaning everyone besides me) get the pool up and running so that I can get in it and exercise.  I find exercising in the pool to be so much easier and I can do it longer so I have been looking forward to that all through the fall and winter. 

So far, we have not  done much.  There was the long holiday weekend and my oldest son brought home a cold, which the younger son has now caught.  So I guess we'll pass that thing around for a while before we begin doing anything. :-)

We have been catching up with our oldest, seeing films and videos from his phone and showing him ours, like the film of it snowing really hard the day after he and his friends went back to Mississippi after spring break.  (His friends had wanted to see snow and it had been stubbornly sunny all week. ).  We got to see his band in action, singing a song, with him playing bass guitar.  It was fun.  I didn't take him to see his grandma yesterday because of his cold. 

He's here!

Our college boy and all his stuff and his poor dented car are home!  

Yesterday and today.

Yesterday my husband and son and I were all 3 trying to work out part of the accident details so that my son can come home.  We have gotten the car ready to make the drive home and my son is coming home today (woot!)  but he will have to go back to Mississippi on July 1 to appear in court.  Anyway, we get to see him, so that's good.  Yesterday I was talking on Facebook to a friend and we decided that their family should come over today after the prom-recap meeting we are having at lunch, so now we've got 2 things to look forward to today.

We've recently found out that the bookmobile comes to our church parking lot every couple of weeks, which is not far from home, so Thursday, we went to the bookmobile and stocked up on books and also returned a ton.  It's handy to go out there, although the selection of books, of course, is not that big.  We may be able to ask the librarians to put things on the bookmobile for us in the future though.  I tell you, gas prices being what they are, you've got to take advantage of opportunities like this.  I try and go to the library when I am in town, but now that my mom is in a different town, in a different direction, getting to the library has been a little more complicated.  This year, it seems, everything has gotten more complicated.  Sigh.

Just a note on what we are reading lately as we have been reading some good stuff:

Me
The Rosie Project
Paradise Fields 
Queen of Babble in The Big City

Girl
Jinx

Boy
Percy Jackson - All of them.

Together
The Wells Bequest

Still here.

We are mostly still here.   Oldest son has not gotten to come home yet due to the snafu with the car accident.   He is staying with a friend.   I hope we get it all worked out soon.   Over the weekend,  my daughter finished the last of her assigned school work and so quietly and unceremoniously finished high school.  Youngest son is taking his time finishing 10th grade.  Life goes on.  We're doing the one-day-at-a-time survivial method, but I hope/pray that we get my oldest son's situation resolved and my mom continues to settle in and we will have a little breathing space.  Whew.  Middle age is kicking my hiney.

Since these pictures have been making me smile this week, I'll share another one. 

A little rest, then.

I had a little rest over the weekend and now I am going to get busy.  I've got to go to pick up mom an hour away, bring her back to our county for a doctor's appointment, then take her back.  We're going to the pain management clinic and I hope/pray we are not in there for too many hours this time.  I'm taking my art journaling supplies just in case I need to de-stress while there, which I more than likely will.  Then I have to get my son's car registration updated because he was in an accident over the weekend and his registration was not up to date.  So joy.  I tell you, if it's not one thing, it's another around here.  He's okay but for a couple of hours on Saturday when we didn't hear from him and wondered if Mississippi state law would require him to go to jail or his car to be impounded, was a bit nerve racking.

Sigh.

It was fun.

We had a good time at the prom.  It was a lot of work but it was worth it, I think.  When I got there, thinking there were 5 or 6 hours of work ahead, I thought - why do we do this every year?  But then later when the kids are dancing and having a great time, and then when the seniors are recognized and told to dance with someone special and my daughter picks her Dad, I realize why.  It was very sweet.  There was one of the girls we didn't know who was a bit annoying at the beginning and one girl, who despite there being 9 chaperones in the gym with the kids, kept running down to hall to our improvised  break room and saying she was just looking for the parents, wondering where all the parents were.   Is it just me or is that kind of odd?   Anyway, it was good and now we can resume our regular lives.  My oldest son is coming home on Monday.  He was in 2 weddings this weekend.  I hope to get a good picture of him in his wedding finery since I have good pictures of my other 2 in their prom finery.  :-)