New Year, Here I am

Wow, it's been so long since I posted on the blog that I have forgotten what font I typically use...

I remain in awe of all the homeschooling bloggers who were able to keep up with Jen's blog-a-day-for-a-whole-week challenge. Not around here, that's for sure. I think the chronically ill, pregnant at 45, homeschooling mother version should be blog once-a-month for 7 months straight! Now, that would be a challenge I might meet.

Since I posted last time at the beginning on December, I had to abandon the Three Kings Link-Up since I was too sick to set them up each night, and the kids were too sick to care. I had to cancel our typical Christmas Eve Fondue Dinner, and instead some kind friends invited us over for dinner, and after 2 hours we had gotten our fill of Christmas cheer and were ready to come on home. My parents and brother and his family came over for dinner on Christmas Day, and despite having planned an elaborate and traditional dinner we had to settle for Honey Baked Ham and deli-ordered Caneloni. Which was delicious, but it wasn't what I had aspired to certainly.

I felt a little better on New Year's Eve, so I made the Fondue that night and also created a Scavenger Hunt for the kids which they enjoyed.  By mid-January I was officially over my several week long Sinus Infection and I was jumping for joy and full of energy. I took advantage of the energy and did things that I don't normally do with the kids, like take them to the movies by myself, or check out a new park. I was starting to feel like a normal Mom for a bit. I was on fire and started volunteering to do a few things here and there, and was finally even keeping up with paperwork and taxes around here.

On February 11th I had my most recent Remicade infusion, just hours later my mother in law died in the early morning hours of February 12th while my husband was on a plane on his way back from India, we slept through Valentine's Day and my husband's birthday on the 19th, so it came as no surprise that within a week the entire family was sick again (some worse than others) and lo and behold! I have another sinus infection. Everyone else is better already, just that nagging cough left in a few of them, but here I am, still sick and tired.

I have been very depressed about it for the last 10 days. I had so many big plans for Lent and Easter, inaugurating our finally finished pool this spring, and, of course, helping my husband with funeral arrangements for his Mom. 

But nada. 

I can barely get out of bed. I am up all night with insomnia because I cough or have an asthma attack every time I lay down and then sleep or drag during the next day. I am drinking fluids 24/7, I am on my 2nd round of antibiotics, and I am still not getting any better. I hate it. Most days I get up only to go to the doctor or drive the kids to a co-op class or an activity. We've been eating off paper plates for days now and the mail and the tax paperwork have been piling up dangerously high. (Not to mention all my mother in laws mail and estate paper work is coming to the house too.)

I don't feel like a Mom or a wife when I am so sick and can do nothing. I know I shouldn't judge myself by what I can do for my family, but the reality is, most of my children's memories involve Mommy "doing" something: baking, crafting, traveling, etc. Spending 8 hrs a day on Minecraft while Mommy is asleep or tossing and turning in bed is no fun for anyone. 

I am eternally grateful to Ms. Jody and the team at www.minecrafthomeschool.com - without their structure and guidance and class assignments I would have felt really guilty about letting them be on the computer so much. So far they've studied famous world monuments and the history of ship-making. It's their first experience on a multi-player server and they're learning a lot about game etiquette and learning to work with lots of other kids from all around the world. There are 120 kids just in their beginners class alone, aged 5 to 11. Though if your child is not a strong independent reader, I don't recommend it unless you have the time and energy to sit with them and read all the class materials and then sit and read the instructions and chats that come through on the screen. My two older ones have been great about helping the emerging reader get through the game, so I've just had to do the background reading aloud for him. There is quite a bit of reading to get through before each week starts.

Through this all, I am grateful that the pregnancy continues to go well. I've made my myriad appointments to specialists and ultrasounds and managing the gestational diabetes and everything they can see (without being invasive) is looking very good. There will be a new baby in the house in less than 7 weeks and I'm thinking I should probably order at least a crib and a car seat by then. 

A week ago, I started collecting materials for my daughter and me to assemble a Lenten centerpiece which we made several years ago and everyone missed in the years since. I thought it was the *one* thing I could get done to prepare for this Lenten season. A week later, we just got to start it today and we still need to buy a few more things to complete it. Slow is so hard for me....

St. David's Day cakes and celebration. Nope. Kings Cake for Mardi Gras. Nope. Though I'm thinking Pancakes for Dinner will be perfect for Shrove Tuesday.

Over the last two weeks I did manage to get two fun, volunteer projects done or at least mostly done. The daughter of a friend is taking an unpaid internship this summer at a local pro-life health center and almost didn't take it because of money reasons. (Which makes perfect sense, she needs to work during summers for the following fall's tuition.) I convinced her to set up a fundraising campaign on indiegogo and she has been busy, busy, busy setting it all up. It has turned out so well, and I am hoping that many pro-life folks will read it, spread the word about it, and contribute to her fundraising campaign. She is a wonderful young woman with a great big heart for women and children and I am glad I got to be a little part of her big, developing story. Her site will go "live" on Monday afternoon, so look for a big announcement from me that afternoon. 

It gives me great solace to think that like St. Therese who became patron saint of missionaries (though her illness and vocation kept her confined to her convent for life) that I might be able to help this young lady do wonderful, life saving work while confined by my illnesses and my vocation to bed and home. I hope you will join me in giving generously to her campaign, "Laura 4 Life".

The second little project I'm working on this week is getting ready to give a short presentation to a team of Mock Trial students on courtroom etiquette and a basic overview of opening and closing statements, direct and cross-exams, and hearsay and evidence, etc. The little bit of preparation I have done to feel prepared for my 30 minute talk has solidified that I was right to stop practicing law 12 years ago. Just that little bit of getting back into the minutia has confirmed that law was not the career for me. I wish I had figured that out before going to law school and taking on student loans, but I can't change that now.

Seven Quick Takes - Vol. V

--- 1 ---

I'm back on the 7 Quick Takes Friday schedule, and it feels good to be back in a routine with the blogging. It is so much easier to blog when I have a "menu" of what I want to blog about for the week. Like my kids now know that Friday is fish day, my brain knows that Friday is 7 Quick Takes day.

---2---

This afternoon we had our first Easter Garden Party Tea. This is one of those areas where I have to be w-a-y realistic about what I am going to be able to accomplish.  Jessica and Charlotte post incredibly inspiring Garden Party ideas both on their own blogs and over at Catholic Cuisine, but I never manage to get all those things prepared each and every week. Or I focus so much on finding or making the correct snacks and the pretty food labels that I neglect to read through the Scripture. {which is so horribly backwards, I know.} So what I learned from last year's experience is that one or two or at most three carefully prepared snacks will do for our family. I allowed Sweetpea to convince me to make one complicated snack out of her new baking book. She tells me that she wants baking to be her new project for project-based homeschooling, but I'm not sure what that will mean. In the meantime, until I figure that out, here she is working on the Lamb and gate scene for the Good Shepherd dinner...hour 1.

Tinting the coconut into green grass.

Covering milano cookies in black frosting.

 Hour 2....

Each sheep's pasture frosted, sprinkled with green grass and flowers, with fence posts.

Sweetpea building the sheepfolds and gate.

Poundcake sliced and formed into lamb bodies, awaiting frosting.

 Hour 3....

Eyes and ears and tongues.

Breadstick dough shaped into shepherd's crooks.

The sheep in the pastures with fences did make an awesome centerpiece for our 1st Easter Garden Party this spring. The little brothers loved it; Baby M kept shouting 'baa baa baa'. 

With some interruptions for taking Toto back and forth to batting practice, it took almost 4 hours to get dinner on the table and get this massively fussy lambs in the pasture with the sheepfold gate centerpiece done. I wouldn't do that again, there has got to be an easier lamb cupcake I can convince her to try next year. Everyone enjoyed the dinner, though we all agreed we needed more savory items and the sheep were just too sweet to eat one each. We shared one between two people and even then we were really, really full. We plan to give 3 sheep away to friends.

Between doing the readings and saying a few prayers, placing the stickers on our The Garden of the Good Shepherd sticker scene, and this meaningful dinner - the impression was made.

These sticker scene books often sell out before Easter but I see they have several left in stock on Amazon right now, so you still have time to buy one if you would like to incorporate this tradition into your Easter season liturgical celebrations.

Today we had a shepherd's pie (frozen dinner aisle), salad, bread stick shepherd's crooks, grapes, sheep cheese, and butterfly (resurrection) crackers. Sweetpea made the sheep and gate fold scene out of her new baking book. It is a gorgeous book to look at, we already own the other two in the series and love them all. The sheep scene took way too long to do, so I can't wholeheartedly recommend it as a baking book yet, but it is certainly inspirational and gives me lots of new ways to think about and look at food design.

 

We bought a Dick's Bakery Burnt Almond Cake to celebrate Gordo finishing his Kindergarden Math workbook today. We have to save it for another day - the lamb cakes were too much sugar! I'm not sure whether or not to order the first grade one yet or give him the rest of the year off. Maybe we should just focus on reading for the rest of the year.

---3---

Sweetpea has been lobbying for us to be "really Catholic" and to take off from school for all of the Easter season, all the way up until Pentecost. I explained to her that that's just not going to happen. But good try though.

---4---

I am relieved that rugby is done and that choir will be done in about 6 weeks, we all need a break from the schedule. Bill got sick again last weekend at the end-of-season rugby tournament where he got caught off guard by the cold and the drizzling rain. 

---5---

I am still trying to figure out how our culture got from "pro-choice" means I support a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy in case of rape, incest, or endangering the mother's life to "pro-choice" means I support a woman's right to kill a baby born alive after a botched late term abortion. Planned Parenthood even has a name for it now "an after-birth abortion" - for anyone looking that one up in the dictionary, you can find it under "i" for infanticide or insane. Here’s the video of the Planned Parenthood Spokeswoman testifying before the Florida Legislature:

Please stop calling yourself "pro-choice" if you are NOT for abortion at any time for any reason. Maybe what you really are is pro-life with strictly limited exceptions. Your "pro-choice" leaders have gone off a cliff and want to take you and our country with them...Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade is now pro-life,  Dr. Bernard Nathanson one of the founders of NARAL, became pro-life before he passed away last year in his 80s, Abby Johnson, a former Clinic Director of Planned Parenthood in TX, is now pro-life. These are not religious wackos out to limit a woman's "reproductive choices." These are individuals who have come from the belly of the beast and want you to hear the truth about what Planned Parenthood (and our tax dollars) are doing. Please do your own research -  the "pro-choice" movement is not what you think it is.

---6---

My copy of Project-Based Homeschooling has arrived and I've been reading through it quickly. I've been hearing about this book for a long time and reading the author's blog, and it seems like something my kids would really enjoy doing. Plus I could say "it's project time" and get them off the TV and they would still get to work on the project of their own choosing. I'll let you know how it goes once I start implementing some of the ideas. What I haven't figure out is how to keep art materials accessible for the older ones while keeping the baby safe and out of things he shouldn't get into. It does feel like a more directed and organized form of unschooling, but not as deliberate as say "strewing." I'm still trying to figure it all out.

---7---

I need to really work on conversation manners with my kids. I was horrified on Tuesday when after the speaker's presentation (during our field trip to Moffet Naval Air Base to learn about Frederick Trapnell) my son shook the man's hand (Trapnell's son no less) and said "thank you, but that speech was a little boring." :(  It is hard to teach kids how to be polite under any circumstance without lying. If they are served something to eat that they don't like or receive a gift they don't like they still need to be gracious, but I don't want to teach them to lie either. Even a white lie is a lie. It's a fine line but they're going to have to learn it. 

Head on over to Jen's Conversion Diary for the rest of the Seven Quick Takes.

Disclosure of Material Connection: The links to the Garden of the Good Shepherd Sticker Book and Cupcake Baking Book in this post are “Amazon affiliate links.” This means that if you click on the link and purchase it, I will receive an affiliate commission and be able to save up for a grande latte. I only recommend products or services I use personally and that I believe have value to other homeschooling mothers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Roses - In many forms

I completed my first ever novena in time for St. Therese's Feast Day for blessings for our Little Flowers group - that the girls would enjoy it, that I would not be nervous, that the mothers would get along.
All those good things that I had specifically prayed for for our Little Flower meeting happened on Saturday morning. Everyone left happy and joyful and excited.

On Friday night, we received confirmation that our home, the house built by Rose and Paul Shoup, had been approved for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the first in our town.

Saturday evening we attended the banquet celebrating 25 years of the Juan Diego Society. It was a very inspirational evening - there were roses on the table, Lila Rose of Live Action gave a riveting speech, St Therese's name was invoked many times, the roses of Our Lady of Guadalupe were remembered. We made the hard decision to become monthly donors even though we had said we would not buy anything at the auction because finances were so tight. The presentations were so moving that we could not do something. Here's Baby M feeling a little star struck in the arms of Lila Rose of Live Action. This young woman is so humble and gracious, it's like she doesn't even know she has Planned Parenthood quaking in their boots. I bet they have whole staff meetings dedicated to how to stop her work!

Tonight our friend and neighbor came by and delivered beautiful white roses to our home. I have known this friend for over 5 years, see her very frequently, and she has never brought me flowers until today. It might be time to set up that monthly pay pal payment to the Juan Diego Society...

***Updated: this friend also brought me eclairs - and I just learned today from reading Jessica's blog over at Shower of Roses that eclairs were St. Therese's favorite treat! This friend is not Catholic so she would not have known what these things would mean to me!

St. Therese, Pray for Us!