World Upside Down

To those who don't know...my dad attempted suicide on 6/22. We'd been adjusting his medications under the care of his neurologist, and Daddy was not in his right mind. The depression was too much. He is alive. He was care-flighted to the hospital.

But...it was a very long day. He was in surgery for about 4 1/2 hours. He did major damage to his neck with a knife. Please understand that I don't want to go into further details.

He did NOT hit his carotid arteries or the veins; the nerves did not appear damaged; his larynx and trachea were injured, but appear to be o.k. after surgery. They are keeping him sedated for obvious reasons. He has had to have a tracheotomy.

However, his blood pressure was so low that stroke is a possibility. We'll know more tomorrow when they 'un-sedate' him to see if he's had a stroke.

Thank you to those of you who came to the hospital to be with us...words will never be able to express how much that meant to mom and me. For those of you who were praying, I saw the answer to your prayers when the surgeon came out and reported all the things that had NOT gone wrong.

Unfortunately, Mom is the one who found him and she needs extra special prayers for now. Images that won't leave are the greatest burden right now.

We love you and appreciate your prayers. My husband will man the phone, but please understand that email will probably be the easiest way for me to update you, as I don't want to go into details where my boys can overhear.


This is the text of the email I sent out the first night. How I could do that I don't know. God is amazing. He protected Daddy.

Getting on the band wagon

Well since my youngest DS seems intent on home schooling, I've begun investigating curriculum choices. I believe I'll go with the "Five in a Row" by Jane Claire Lambert for the beginning. It's a thematic program where we read the same book five days in a row, pulling out various things to study each day.

I've created a list of books I'll need to check out from the public library for the entire first volume of this curriculum. I am actually getting excited about this. Since I'm not a teacher by trade, I would imagine I'll have lots of work to do to learn how to best help my son, but at least I'm excited about it.

Today he and I were reading a book and he got the wiggles. I had him hop up and do 10 hops in place, clapping on the 'downbeat.' he shorted me a couple of hops, so he had to do it all again. He was laughing by the time we'd actually gotten 10 hops in a row out of him. He was also able to sit still and read for awhile longer.

THESE are the things we can do at home that public school isn't geared for.

I'm hopeful, prayerful and trusting in God.

P.S. The new fence on our property is underway! I am SO excited about that!

Seems DS has made the decision for me...

We were discussing the contents of DS's backpack tonight. He's the one in summer school. I asked what was in there. He listed the contents and then said...I can just use my take-home folder next year in 2nd grade! (all enthusiasticly). And here I sit, listening, thinking "When am I going to tell him that 'next year' is going to be a repeat of THIS year?" When, in true DS fashion, he said, "Oh, what was I thinking. We're going to homeschool next year!"

As the title says...seems DS has made the decision for me!

I guess I'd better get some home school curriculum catalogs and get crackin'!

Summer School is here!

Well today was was the start of summer school for my youngest DS. He seemed to enjoy the experience and since it's only a half day of instruction, he didn't seem to mind it too much. However, he did realize that our church's Vacation Bible School was a time conflict with summer school. (He realized this about a week ago). He proceeded to tell me "You shouldn't have signed me up for summer school!" How do you tell him that I didn't really have a choice?!

VBS has started and I'm getting my baby fix. I'm in the room with the bed babies. We have a 14 mo. old boy and a 4 mo. old girl. Since I only have boys of my own, the baby girl thing is lots of fun. She was a hoot today and make me wish I'd started having kids sooner, when I was younger. Ah well....

Next week will see my oldest DS off to a digital photography class for the majority of the week. A chance for him to grown and shine some. He's really had some major achievements since school was out. First, the stress of school was off him and he's a completely different child. Happy, laughing, joking (at times at his own expense -- a first!) and generally the sweet, sensitive guy that I remember from years past that I thought had gone underground with the approaching tween years. Then we learned that he's now taller than I am (not a *major* accomplishment, since I'm not a giant, but still big in his book). And he's just kind of decided that he can help around the house and it won't kill him.

Who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?

I took my DH's recent road trip as an opportunity to attack that pit that he calls an office and do some major cleaning. Even if no one else in the world can tell I worked in there (and you probably could tell), I know that it's better and that feeling is nice. A step in the right direction, I can do anything 15 minutes at a time...

Just as my youngest DS will learn to read and write....and the eldest will learn to take amazing pictures....a little bit at a time.