Monthly Archives: September 2008

So now that we are back in the land of the living, we are ready to move quickly to get schooling into full swing. We’re joining PE class this week, Co-op is in its 4th week, most of our books for school have arrived and we have begun to jump into another year. Our relaxed schooling over the summer (reading and math only) has been ramped up to include Bible, History, Math, Reading, Spelling, Language/Writing, German, Typing/Keyboarding, PE, Choir, and Science. We are the poster children of educational alternatives.

In real life however, the Imp has been reading beginning chapter books just fine, but is now dissolving into tears about having to read the DIRECTIONS in her math book (or any other book) because she still believes firmly that she is not able to read unless I am sitting next to her holding her READING book. (What’s THAT about!?) She has also told her co-op teacher that she doesn’t write…..at all…..ever. (AARGH! When did this occur….we write every day?!) The Sarge has decided he does “not recall” any math steps that would require him to write out his work, so he guessed his way through and bombed his review test, which was supposed to spring board him effortlessly into the wonderful world of Beginning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus. (May the Lord walk closely with us through THIS math year!) The Gremlin has relegated punctuation and capitalization into an “optional” category, and has accused both of messing with his writing “flow” and handicapping him needlessly. (This child needs to study law some day. The fact that he explain these things with a straight face and without running for cover after presenting this audacity is disturbing.)

We’ve made it out of the starting gate with a flourish and good show…….and promptly……. landed on our heads. Please pray for my sense of humor to remain and lots of patience and wisdom……it’s looking like a really, really LONG year, and we’ve only just begun.

Almost 3 weeks later, and we are finally on the mend. After 2 weeks of house guests and Disney, we all came down with wicked versions of a respiratory-bronchial-chest gunk-cold. We hoped it was just all the public cooties that we were exposed to, but we couldn’t be sure. We also had an “incident” with some water that had sat too long in the water tank of the RV. We had treated it prior to storage….but apparently the treatment chemicals break down and become ineffective after time and extreme temperatures…..Who knew!?

When the offending water came through the pipes, we immediately cleared the kids to grandma’s trailer and Hubby and I vented the RV and purged the water systems…during the process, Hubby ended up sprayed in the face and I got hit by the black plague-water too. Within 2-3 days, all 5 of our family ended up with a respiratory plague.

Upon returning home, we rode it out until the two littles took a turn for the worse. We explained what we had been exposed too for the doctor, but opted not to use antibiotics……except as a last resort. The Imp cleared up with mass amounts of garlic, oj, chicken soup, Rx cough medicine, and a steroid that helped her lung rattle. The Gremlin continued to get worse and we finally opted for the antibiotics for him. I’m still not sure if that helped him much, but 4 days into it, he finally began to improve. Now, we are just coughing occasionally and feeling almost normal again. It’s good to be among the living.

We’ve been blessed to have family from Michigan for the past 2 weeks. We’ve been catching up on baby cuddles with our newest little nephew and his adorably HUGE “Gerber baby” cheeks. We’ve managed to excise most of the electronic gremlins that were plaguing our RV after sitting in storage too long. We spent several days in Disney eating wonderfully sugary and salty amusement park foods….all the while noting the swelling of feet and buzzing in the back of our heads from caffeine and afore mentioned foods. We’ve frolicked from early morning till way past any sane person’s bedtime in an attempt to not miss a minute of family fellowship, bonding, and excitement. We also discovered that the world of eternal happiness and magic isn’t all that happy if we have not slept at least 8 hours over the course of 2 days.

We are home now, grateful we don’t have the flu….. all 5 are suffering with head colds from one of the billions of public cooties we were exposed to. Our extended family is going back home soon and we feel like we have let them down by getting sick for the last few days of their visit. Laying on the couch watching movies, napping, medicating, and reminding children not to cough on each other….we have been less than FUN for the last two days. We played much too hard, had a wonderful time catching up with family, and now we need a vacation from our vacation, it seems.