Sickness & Tea

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And just week before last when I took the kids in for check-ups I was thinking with gratitude at what overall good health we’ve had this winter. Ah, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord. So last week and this we are struggling against the germs that creep, the viruses that snatch. I think so far Athena is the only one that hasn’t quite succumbed. But even she has sometimes turned that particular shade which only mothers see, that tells her that while not quite sick, that child is not quite well either. And then I am especially grateful for homeschooling and the freedom to make students sleep in and take naps. I am also a big fan of hot baths with Epsom Salts and tea tree oil and tea drinking. I love Traditional Medicinals teas. They actually work! I would like to buy their stock. I haven’t tried one of their teas that didn’t actually help. Right now we are heavily steeped (ha! ha! tea joke!) in Gypsy Cold Care which I like just for the name if nothing else. Throat Coat is fabulous. I also have from a good source, a-hem, that their Cran-Aid tea is quite helpful when that sort of ailment ails you. I didn’t intend for this post to end up as a product endorsement, but somehow it has a mind of its own and it has. Traditional Medicinals has not paid me anything for it, but if they’d like to, that’s okay!  There’s lots more of life to tell about, but for now it will have to wait. Sniffle sniffle, hack, hack.

Plane Tickets

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The Big Plan is feeling a little more genuine these days for a few reasons. We bought our plane tickets last week. July 5th is our date of departure – I  figured I’d like to go out with a bang! We’ll celebrate Independence Day and then skip the country. We got a pretty good deal on the tickets for the summertime, but I still can’t help it: every time we buy tickets for all four, no…five, no, now six! of us to travel to Switzerland, visions appear unsummoned of all the things that that much money could have purchased: a new family room couch, for instance; a semester of college tuition; new clothes for everyone; a nice chunk of mortgage; new dishes; a LOT of cookies. Ah, well! Then I remember that for us, visiting family and maintaining those long-distance relationships as best we can has always been a big priority, and a corresponding big chunk of our budget. Which leads me to thinking that this is why we’re doing this in the first place. Some day my kids probably won’t remember (too much) that we watched movies in the family room sitting mostly on the carpeted floor, jostling for the coveted soft spots in the rocking chair and on the ottoman, but they will remember that they knew both sets of grandparents. And they will remember (hopefully Hermes will too) this upcoming year that we will spend with them, not vacationing and stressfully having to make every minute, every second “quality time”, but just living, everyday, through the seasons of the year. And that, I need to remember, will be priceless.  

Everyday Bloggin’

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I’ve been inspired recently by a friend who writes on her blog nearly every day about her family’s everday homeschool doings, largely she says, so that she has some record, somewhere of what they spent the day doing! I’m thinking that’s not such a shabby idea, considering that most days I fall into bed wondering if we did anything worthwhile or educational at all. When I stop and think hard, I realize that yes, in between all the coming and going and activities, we did learn a few things, probably quite a lot. So maybe I’ll try? So I have a record somewhere to make me feel better when I have insecure homeschool moments? days? lifetimes? BUT, and that is a big but (ha!), I will have to relinquish some, or rather A LOT, of my perfectionist writing tendencies.  So maybe there will be some sentences that just hang together don’t quite right. Maybe I will overuse wonderfully descriptive words in two wonderfully consecutive phrases. Maybe fragments. But then maybe, just maybe, I could post a little more and then posts wouldn’t be so far between because I am waiting for the perfect time to “perfect” them. Maybe I could get to the point where I feel like a post written quickly at the countertop or zipped off after lunch (right now) while I’m ignoring everybody would “count.” So anyway, today: Everybody felt groggy this morning. I had the worst time getting out of bed, and I am certain that it is due to Daylight Savings Time. Twice a year it irritates me all over again. Yes, I do like the long, bright evenings, but the switch is just hard! For those of us who seem to be more closely tied to light for their circadian rhythms and who work hard at going to bed and getting up at the same time every day, suddenly jumping an hour one direction or another just upsets the whole sleep pattern thing again, and it takes me about a week to adjust. Okay, enough whining about that. Sorry. I actually did get to the gym this morning. Mr. Zeus prayed over me to have the energy to go, so then what could I do? I made it and did a weight circuit which I haven’t done in a looooong time. Nothing crazy, just remembering how those machines work.  After I came home and breakfasted and more importantly, coffeed, I took Hermes to preschool and then came back and started school work with the other two. (Artemis is away for a field trip overnight with her 2-day a week middle school.) We read the first chapter of Nehemiah – we’ve just finished up Ezra, and we want to get Nehemiah’s take on the Return of the Exiles. Then spelling/dictation for the two of them, and then Apollo and I finished up his Little House chapter on The Wonderful Machine, about a new-fangled threshing machine that came to the Ingalls farm. After that we did French together, and I left to go read to Hermes preschool class. This month is BEAR week: Be Excited About Reading and parents were invited to be guest readers.  I read Harold and the Purple Crayon (Harold was my childhood favorite) and The Story About Ping. While I was gone Apollo and Athena finished up their French and did their math lesson.  We had refurbished leftovers for lunch, cleaned up and scattered for FOYB – Flat On Your Back time. And so here I am, feeling drowsy on the couch, listening to the hum of the dishwasher and Hermes fussing about FOYB time in his room. I’ll bet he’s not really flat on his back, but I don’t really care as long as for the moment he’s there and I’m here!  The day’s not nearly done, but thinking through what’s already been accomplished does give me encouragement…and makes me think that becoming a little flatter on this couch would be a good idea and wouldn’t be unmerited. What…do you…zzzzzz….

Lego Winter Olympics

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Time once more to be a proud mama: Apollo the Lego Creator has done it again – a tribute to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Can you discern which sports are represented in this diorama? Maybe there will be a giveaway for correct answers! IMG_8322Which is cuter – the Lego Olympians or their Builder? IMG_8326