Year 6, September 20th-23rd, 2021: Finally, A Normal Week!

 This week looks like it will be a very normal week of many stay at home days, yeah! That means the stay at HOME mom can stay AT HOME and we can HOME school at HOME. Yeah! We can actually work our whole day routine, too. We managed to get history done, went over eveyone's school work from last week and today, figured out what has been read and what hadn't been read (and now it's up to me to write that all down, there's never enough time for me to get everything done), etc. I was able to get to my to do list by 3:30 and make a few phone calls and even blog a little bit. And I managed to get the kids to do their chores, have Grandpa class, and I made some chicken in the Instapot for supper. So, lots and lots done. That's all I ask for. Lots and lots done. Without rushing too fast. Just steady progress. And no vertigo from running in circles.

What I didn't like about today was that we had to open the windows because it was so stuffy and we couldn't run the air conditioning because it's broken. That's right, the last few days of heat and humidity and the a/c went out. And it rained all day. And it will rain all day tomorrow. And the humidity is killing Justin and I. It's making me itchy and feel sweaty and everything feels sticky. I'm not used to it. I did take a shower earlier today so at least I don't have the lotion on that I did yesterday that made me feel greaasy. I was trying that to see if it was just that my skin felt dry. Nope. Everything is making me itchy. I don't know what to do about that. Super sensitivity I guess. Probably diet related and inflammation everywhere and cortisol levels, you name it. Blech. Justin has a headache now, and I'm feeling it, too. Worst possible timing for the a/c to break down, too, because we don't have the funds, although Jared says that the extra house has signs on the property that says "coming soon to market" so who knows. Maybe we'll get that sold by the end of the year. Could mess up some other things financially though. Sigh. Like applying for financial aid all around. Medicaid. You know name it. If you just make a tiny bit over, we are in deep trouble. We really needed to make a ton over, or flip multiple houses in a year to make it worth it. With the constant appointments and such, and the cost of meds now for Justin. Um, yeah, we kind of need to stay where we are at. Sigh. Never mind, I won't go there. I'm too tired for that.

Let's see. What else. I think that's about it. Yup. Tomorrow should be about the same. I'm hoping to get Justin out for a quick trip to the BMV. And I should get Abishai done sooner since I won't have to shower first. We'll see. Nearly there with the blog so let's trot over there and finish. And then tomorrow instead of phone calls in the afternoon, I can hit up a different kind of project.

I'm so glad Keturah got to stay and help pack Baskets for Benjamin with her small group last night. Mrs. Alison and Faith even came to oversee the operation. Keturah said she got to take the wrappers off the baskets and all that so did her favorite thing, destroy something! Lol!

They packed 200 baskets! Wowzers! Way to go girls! And of course they prayed over the baskets, too. The baskets will go to women suffering from pregnancy and infant loss.

At least the a/c waited to go out until the temperatures were finally cooling down for the season.

Abishai decided to draw his own pictures today instead of having me do them. He drew a HUGE boat he said and he didn't draw just one drum, but a whole drum set like big brother Benaiah has. I think he's the only one of the 4 that actually wanted to draw and color these pages.

Uh oh, it's rained so hard and the downspouts now go directly into the bamboo which has no other drainage that it's now flooding. Yikes. I think Jared might need to rethink this design. The whole point of the barrier was to not have the bamboo escape because it can overtake an area. But then we put the down spouts pointed directly into it so it would help water it. Well, this isn't what we had in mind. I'll have to look at it in the morning and hope that the extra water got absorbed by dirt 4 ft down or something.

Boo boo updates. This one felt like it needed to pop again, so I took some photos just in case. It feels iritated and maybe infected? Why does it take so long to heal? Why so flaky, too? Why still so red? Ugh. Not fair! It's been like two months. It's still pretty tender when pushed on. Ugh.

No sheen on this one, but hurts when pushed on. I got tired of putting lotion on it, so I guess I'll try that again. Sigh.

Talking to Grandpa on Zoom for Bible class because it was pouring down rain and we didn't want to drive over to the next street, lol. It worked just fine.

Michael W. Smith and friends along with some of the Friends Online community are in Hawaii right now instead of doing a cruise as their annual event. So I'm trying to follow along as the pictures and videos are being shared on their personal pages. I wanted to know how many hours they are behind me. Quite a few actually.

I'm a tiny bit jealous because I could use a vacation. But, I have been also reminiscing because I have actually been there, 18 years ago. This is us, 18 years ago. Yeah, that's a skinny me. I weighed only 2/3 of what I weigh now. Basically, I was Keturah's size, probably not as wide at the hips. Jared was probably closer to Benaiah's size he is now. And yes, that's 1 yr old baby Benaiah. How that is Benaiah, I don't know. He's so tiny! Newlyweds still as this was right around our 2nd anniversary, and with a 1 yr old on our hip, Hawaii was the last state for the Johnson family to visit of the 50 states. Benaiah and I were there at the perfect timing to polish it off. Shauna was able to see Hawaii when she and Aaron went they went there for their honeymoon in 2005.

Ah, the worship years! Just so happens that Worship and Worship Again and the concert that followed were scrapbooked right before the pages of Hawaii, lol. Ok, then!

Like I said, this was 18 years ago. So much has changed. 'Nuff said. On the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri.

My friends Clarke and Julie just shared their pics of Pearl Harbor from visiting a couple of days ago. Still can't believe it's been this many years. Time has flown! And so much has changed personally. I'm not so innocent and naive anymore. Definitely not the same physically, and that part makes me sad of course. And that 1 yr old? He's the same age now that his dad was when I met him, that's the scary part. But thankfully, he's got this adulting thing down already. And yet, he's still my baby, right? Maybe? Is he really? No, he isn't. He's gone. He doesn't need me. He tells me that often. And that's the hardest part most days. That young one, is all grown up. And he thinks he did the growing up. But we know that we had a hand in it, too. As well as many other people and God, too.

Yesterday, I might have been at the top of my game, but today, I was at the bottom. Funny how that happens, eh? And one comment, that I can filter out most days now, is all it took to take me down. It's SOOOOO frustrating. I couldn't do any school with anyone this morning. I took a phone call at about 11:30am. I didn't even eat lunch. I'm not sure how I drank coffee at 11 and managed not to get shaky during read aloud time. But I recovered enough to make it through that with the other read alouds. Abishai did a few of his workbook pages during read alouds and we ended up doing the rest of his work between 7:30 and 8:30 pm, poor little dude. This was after he woke up at 1:30 AM (!) thinking it was 6 am and time to get up for the day. I was still watching a movie at that time so instead of putting him back to bed, I shut off the computer and had a "sleepover" on the couches in the fireside room. I pretended to be naughty and keep him awake and tried  to make him laugh but he wouldn't have it. He fell asleep quickly. At one point he kicked off his blanket but I was cold, so I didn't get up to put it back on him. He was so good today. I got mad and frustrated because I was trying to sort myself out and he was just basically pacing around like he normally does. But the constant movement is distracting to me. It's kind of hard on an inattentive ADHD person to have a suspected hyperactive ADHD person in the house. Thankfully there were times I could send him outside in between spits of rain. 

Meanwhile, Jared did get on the phone with the pension fund people and sorted out his thing there. He screenshotted the right stuff and sent via email to me and I forwarded to the person for the financial aid application. She then called me to say she received it and that it was exactly what she needed. Yeah! That's a relief! Praise the Lord! Mission accomplished! Can we move on from that now, please? How hard was this? When people just do their jobs, everybody wins! I hate being the middle man in these processes. I'm getting so tired of filling out financial aid applications and it's just adding to my stress lately. I need to do the annual one for the kids' doctor as well. Actually, they have Medicaid, so I'm not sure why they need one because there shouldn't be a co pay, but it does cover my gynecologist and behavioral therapist there, so I'll do it anyway, sigh. Whatever. I'll work on it this weekend or something. I have to order more library books for history first or something. Or finish my movie for last night. Or print maps for the school week. Things like that.

During read alouds, Jared sneaked into the sunroom and left a card for me about our argument this morning. He made the comment mentioned above and I had via text made it into a thing and then blamed myself for making it a thing and then shared what I had written down in my notes about it. Point is, apologies were accepted. And that's the thing. Apologies are necessary. And we both suck at it and haven't taught our kids how to do it. And society as a whole doesn't know the meaning of the word. "I'm sorry. I was wrong." or if you don't agree with someone you can still say, "I'm sorry you feel that way but let me explain my point of view. (remember no sarcasm, only soft spoken voice)" That's all I want to hear. One of those two phrases. And then I can listen better.

A couple of other things we managed to do was I baked cupcakes to go with our history lesson on Irish's war for independence from England and it's civil war. And two loads of laundry with Keturah's sheets and blanket, and our sheets in them. Oh, and the a/c guy ordered our a/c unit. I tried running the a/c to at least get the moisture out of the air, but no such luck. I finally just opened the windows once it cooled off again after dinnertime. We won't even reach a high of 60 degrees tomorrow, so that will help. I might turn on the heat, although Jared will not like that. We'll be gone for a good part of the day, so I'll wait until we get home. 

And now I'm tired. But I finished drinking a second cup of coffee at 8pm. We'll see what time I make it to bed. Not 1:30am. I need to at least try to say words to Jared tonight. He had Rooted babysitting tonight, so we didn't see him at suppertime. That will last until the first week of November. Sigh. It's like a sports season. I can't wait for it to be over. But hopefully they won't meet over fall break which is coming up. That will be nice. Bonus nights at home for us. Yeah!

Yup. Just like I explained up above. And Ruth Beechick's books are a staple in the homeschool community.

I made cupcakes so we could show how Northern Ireland is part of the island of Ireland, but politically belongs to the United Kingdom after the Irish war of independence of England. And then after the Irish Civil War, which was about religion, i.e. Roman Catholics in Ireland vs. Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Red for Great Britain, Green for Ireland.

Ireland's War of Independence and Civil War

This was an actiivity suggested in the companion to our history reader. Just one of many hands on activities in our history book that's for all ages. Second time through all four books. One book typically takes a year. We've taken up to 5 1/2 years to do all four books. We'll start our 3rd go around, mainly with just Abishai and I, in January, starting back at Creation.

Hugs and pat pats for puppy just because. I bet he's glad we are home more this week. I'm sure he missed us a lot last week. Well, he did have Keturah to talk to and watch over while she was sick.

I don't know what's gotten into me but I haven't felt like blogging the last few weeks. It's just like I kind of have to do it, you know? I don't want to take the photos or spend my evenings doing it. I think it's because I always feel behind and I'm not actually enjoying life so I don't have time to take photos of ordinary happenings so I forget even the extra stuff because I'm so worried about the next thing on the schedule and what was to happen yesterday and it just starts all over again. And I'm also very tired and playing catch up with email by the time I sit down at my computer. 

So, I'll have to back up to do this past Wednesday. Because what was going to be a normal week, kind of went topsy turvy.

Abishai and I did get to go to the special ball pit place near where we do ASL lessons and the timing will work out ok IF we get there on time and IF he obeys me and gets out of the playground when I tell him to. But he decided to play hard to get so we were a few minutes late picking up the kids. Whoops. The playground was nice and clean and there was plenty to do for the kids it was for. I'm not sure I could afford the full price for it on a regular basis, but eh, for the groupon, it works out well. I'd do the groupon again in the spring or do some kind of other pass or something just for him. I don't need to be walking around or jumping or whatever. Or we need to meet another person or two there. AND it's right next to the United Art and Education north side location so now I can use my coupons on days we don't go to the ball pit place. Yeah! 

Then we went home for lunch and school of course. I was going to attempt some schoolwork with Abishai, but that didn't happen.  After screen time, we went to Gary and Leah's for dinner super early because Justin had small group and Leah had stamp camp. Gary was going to be away on Sunday again. So it was short and sweet dinner of pot roast and odds and ends. It was also only 60 degrees that day, so after we dropped Justin off at small group we went to Kroger to get a fire log and had our first fire in the fireplace for the season. Abishai and I got in our zip up jammies together and enjoyed that.

Smiley Playground Ball Pit Playlist 

The balls are anywhere from a few thick to two or three feet thick so you really have to wade through them sometimes. They have a special machine that cleans them every day or weekly or something. I watched a special video of it on their website when I was purchasing these passes.

I actually went down the slide a couple of times and it was kind of fast!

This one sucks up the balls and then you push the balls to release them on your head.

For different kinds of hand holds to try on this climbing wall but he only tried two. He scaled them in like two seconds.

Here's the cool rice pit. So the image is projected down from 4 projects up above onto the rice on the floor and it's constantly moving. The video is in the playlist. It was really, really neat. And nice and quiet back here. They do play loud music out in the ball pit area.

Abishai loved the big trucks of course.

See how the project is pointed down at the floor?

I told Abishai to do it just once, but he did it twice. He looks so weird! It's one of those pin cushion things you put your hand through to make shapes. I see his funny glasses though. He did it twice because he really wasn't listening to instructions that well.

"Big" small trampolines that actually kind of floated on the balls. We did play for a brief second in the little kids are and then I showed him the sign that said "only for 4 yrs and he understood.

They had an awesome play ground but it made it tough for Moms who needed to grab their children and make them come out to take them to pick up their siblings so they could go home.

Grandma made special stuff for our quick dinner with them tonight. Not sure why she choose Halloween stuff when we don't celebrate Halloween. Makes no sense but I didn't tell her that. The kids just ate them and we talked about other things.

First fire of the season.

Zip up jammies!

Socks with athletes on them!

Nice and warm.

Nice roaring fire for this very chilly fall evening.

Thursday was a bit of a mismatch of a day as well. We tried to get going as soon as possible, but still fell behind and had to cut lessons short. I made boiled eggs for Abishai for breakfast, so that took a few extra minutes. I had a counseling appointment at 1pm. We did quickly read the last history lesson for the week. And then I took a solid 1 hr nap during screen time. I made a dinner of fish and rice, which Abishai refused to eat. Justin left a message for the It's a Block Party Lego store owner so he'll be waiting for a phone call back from him about getting a job there. I just hope he has his phone set up properly to get messages. Jared told his funnel for his tea to "sit down" as he was working on getting his stuff ready for the next day, which I found hilarious. Like you can tell a kid or a dog to "sit down" but can imagine telling a funnel sitting on top of a former alcohol bottle to "sit down?" Yeah, pretty odd. Then Jared went to Bible study and the kids and I watched a video on Benito Mussolini. Actually, I wrote emails and the kids watched. I still a lot of other emails to take care of when I got on the computer last night, so I was unable to finish the blog entries from the last two days. So, I'm pretty exhausted and I'm not satisfied in my involvement in the kids' schooling, so I need to take a look at my personal schedule and boundaries and remind myself of those boundaries and help them firm. I.e. I'm a full time teacher. Nothing but field trips and school between 9am and 3 pm like no errands like oil changes and even doctor's visits. 

Jared bought me this album on our second in person date in January 2019, the cd as well as the audio tape version so we could listen to it in my Dad's car. He didn't have a cd player in the car. Come to find out, Jared only liked a few songs on it. I loved the whole album and listened to it over and over, in part, thinking he liked the whole thing, too. All of the Christian bands I listened to in the 1990's had very, very unique sounds and vocalists. You could easily tell them apart and they would do their concerts differently. Except for a select few, I have no clue who is who because all the vocalists seem to have the same style and vocal range. And the chord progressions and lyrics are all so similar. There's no unique songwriting. Anyway, 23 yrs ago makes me feel old.

Hilarious

True and not funny one bit.

Very cold morning but it warmed up quite and a bit!

Abishai set up the life cycles of insects kits we have to look like maybe where each part would live. He just used all the things that were left out on the table like the water botttles. He's not entirely wrong. When you leave too many things out, creepy crawlers get to them.

That's pretty funny considering I just got a speeding ticket. This one was on a different local one, but the time before that WAS on 465, lol! And yes, I've been known to drastically slow down when I see a cop.

Isn't this awesome?! Do you every use the library's resources?

This is exactly what happened to the pilgrims in their first year here in Colonial America in Plymouth and in Virginia and has happened again. Scary, eh? You have to work, period. Everybody has to. Team work makes the dream work. Or take it from the Bible, 2 Thessalonians 3:10, "Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: 'Those unwilling to work will not get to eat.' "  However, 20% of the people doing 80% of the work is not fair either. And in our family, I'm the 20% doing 80% of the work, and I have only about 20% of my own health, mental and physical sometimes. And unfortunately, there is no "dream" anymore. No one here dreams of anything. They just want to live the blah life and survive. So, that's what we do. We just try to survive the day with no long term goals in mind. And I think a lot of folks have been conditioned to do the same. And that is why our nation is in the predicament that it is in. We've gone backwards 400 years because they don't even truthfully teach what happened 400 years ago, so history is repeating itself. Well, not in my homeschool. We teach the truth. My children have to receive and retain that knowledge, but I have taught it and reminded them of these principles often. That's all I can do. And pray. And pray some more. And set the example. And pray some more. And keep working hard. And try not to complain. Even when I'm exhausted. "Do not grow weary in doing good" is one of the hardest commands in the Bible, I think, but it is in there. Just do it.

The End