Allen has been traveling for work a lot this month, and I was desperately needing some time to recharge. His parents willingly kept the kiddos while he and I headed to Fort Worth for a quick weekend alone. I always enjoy having time with my favorite person -- the kind of quiet time that means we can have uninterrupted conversations and refocus on the important things rather than the busy-things. We ate tasty meals, enjoyed a night of clean improv comedy, had gelato and a variety of beer, and spent a day at the art museum. I. Loved. Our weekend! Between laughter, Monet, and pages and pages of beer option, we both had a blast, and the kids enjoyed time with their grandparents and cousin Beckham.

Life Happens: April through June edition

We are several weeks into our official summer break and I'm getting around to checking out the photos we have taken over the last few many months. The last seven months have been full, but blogging didn't really fit into life. I kept hoping for time and inspiration to work on it, but those never seem to hit me at the same time. Yes, I've had the TIME to do it, but it is usually after the kids are in bed at 8, and I'm tired. Occasionally, I've been inspired to work on it, but never when I can use the computer to get my thoughts down... or I DO start a story and not finish it for several weeks.... but since I don't like posting OUT of order, the story sits and waits for me to finish the posts in between. We have been busy homeschooling, Innovation Academy-ing, scouting, churching, OM-ing, playing, and more, and I'm learning that, no matter how much I wish it would, none of it slows down to wait for me to catch up.

Now, I have the time to write, but I'm a bit overwhelmed by months of photos smiling back at me. Some of the moments I snapped on the camera so I wouldn't forget them... but I've forgot the little details that I meant to get to. I thought about completely skipping to now and not sharing the other photos, but that would mess up our books that we do at the end of the year. Instead, I'm putting them in and writing the few things I do remember.

In April, we covered our kitchen surfaces and windows with plant experiments for science. Maddie realized she was already doing several activities from a plant science badge, so she asked if we could add a few more experiments to finish  the badge. Right around the same time, she started working on a badge that had to do with stamp collecting, so I got all my childhood collections out and showed her how to do it. She had a lot of fun doing through my piles of stamps and finding all the Olympics-, birds-, and butterfly-themed stamps.

This has been a beautiful spring, and one of the best things about homeschooling and half-day schooling is that the kids are outside for hours each day. There have been many days spent in the mud, creating little villages, like Pompeii, or kingdoms with moats. Some days, they set up a campsite and pretended to cook over the fire. Lots of playing, lots of pretending, and sometimes their overheard "silliness" was reiterating what we talked about in history.

The other advantage to being outside is being in nature! We've watched our messy overgrown garden explode with color... so the messy may just get to stay. Every time I try to clean it up a bit, I get chewed up by bugs. I suppose that might be what the birds love about the garden, too. The sweet bluebird mama laid a nest of five eggs, but only three hatched. They left the nest a day or two before I expected them to, but we've seen several juvenile bluebirds out and about, so I'm going with the assumption that they are all okay.

I was so blessed to get to hear the Uganda children's choir again this year. Our family was able to attend a private event at the lake and get to hear one of the kids' first Texas concerts. What a great time I had getting to introduce my home family to some of the people who felt like my Uganda family. The kids got to meet Emmy D (our driver in Uganda). They've met Pastor Emmy and Super Mom before, but it was neat to reintroduce them after we knew each other so much better. I met many of the Uganda children last year, and a couple of the boys even helped me move those shoe boxes daily. We even got to meet Arnold's brother Matthew. Maddie and I got to hear them sing a second time as one of our scout meetings was actually a field trip to hear a PCM concert. It was another blessing for me to get to introduce people from two of my favorite ministries to each other!

Ever since we moved to Whitehouse, each spring we see ads about a Renaissance Festival a few miles down the road. Every year since we felt the kids were old enough to do, we can't seem to find time in March or April to attend. We finally went this year right as we were learning about Renaissance times in home school history lessons. The younger three each enjoyed working with a blacksmith to turn a nail into a miniature sword. All the kids got to watch their own magic show since we arrived to the magician's show at the end, and the man was nice enough to show the kids a little bit of what they missed before. There were some neat shows and a few fun games, but I didn't like that most of the women there who came in costume were dressed like floozies and it wasn't really worth the price we paid to get in.

We attended several of Will's school presentations -- a great thing about home schooling is the flexibility to take all the kids to watch him and let them learn from other kids.

All four kids have spent Sunday evenings in spring doing kids choir at church. They all sang for the Mother's Day church service and again for a Palm Sunday special.

Our American Heritage Girls troop finished out our first program year with an awards ceremony in May. Even though it was just a semester long, our gals and troop accomplished a lot. I took a break from scouts to get through VBS, but I am really looking forward to next year, too!

Now we are two-thirds of the way through June. Our first week of summer was tough -- all of us had to learn to live together without driving each other up the wall. Unfortunately, we all DID go crazy. The second week of June was spent doing VBS. I was leading a missions class for grades K-6. I didn't have to do too much speaking, but somehow I ended up worn out by noon each day. Our afternoons were spent reading, doing a few chores, and napping. Last week, the kids did swimming lessons and that went well enough that I signed them up for another session in July. They are all getting comfortable with several strokes: American crawl, backstroke, breast stroke, and a few others.

This weekend, I have had several hours to catch up on all my partially-started stories, but that isn't how I planned to spend it. Allen and the younger boys were supposed to go with scouts to camp at Caddo State Park last night and stay for the weekend. Will would've gone, but he leaves for church camp before the others would've been back. I had plans for Maddie, Will, and I to do a few fun things last night and today. Ben got sick, though. Sick enough he was asking if he could camp in the bathroom. Allen and Jon waited until this morning (Saturday) to see if Ben was up to going, but he wasn't. Allen and Jon headed out to camp, but took Will with them; he will be riding back with a friend tonight, and heading to church camp early tomorrow. Meanwhile, Ben can't go far from the bathroom, so Maddie and I are sticking around the house, too. Ben and Maddie spent the morning doing puzzles and the afternoon watching Disney movies while I caught up on the blog stories. I am glad to call it caught up now, because the next few months will be busy!

Pickles and Diabetes

When we got home from our spring break trip in March, Pickles was in bad shape so I took her to the vet. A couple rounds of tests, blood-work, and duplicate blood-work to verify, and the diagnosis for our 6.5-pound cat was severe diabetes. She stayed at the vet a night or two so they could give her insulin and see how she handled it. I brought her home, changed her diet, kept her in the bathroom so only she would be eating the expensive food and so we didn't have to find her for her twice-a-day insulin shots. We learned to give her shots. I combed her, a few minutes at a time, to get all the mats out since she hadn't been grooming herself. I checked on her as she laid pitifully for a few days, slowly regaining strength and gaining weight. I took her to the vet every other day for a couple weeks, then we switched to once a week, so they could check her blood-sugar levels and we could adjust her insulin slowly enough to not overwhelm her system.

Honestly, I was expecting her to be on her way to kitty-heaven. The vet said that old cats (she is almost 14 years old) rarely recover from diabetes and will stay on insulin the rest of their lives. Often, younger overweight cats can go into remission from diabetes once their weight is lowered. Our vet said it is rare that an under-weight cat comes out of it, and I wasn't getting good vibes from him about her lasting much longer. It was sad for me because I wasn't ready to say good-bye yet. He told us we would just take it all day-by-day.

Our every other day visits turned into weekly visits. Our weekly turned to bi-weekly, then we started backing off on the amounts of insulin and returning weekly. Then we backed off some more and she was doing well. Her energy returned, her personality was back to normal, she seemed healthy again at about nine pounds. We were able to take her off insulin completely, but we kept her on the new diet. We have not needed shots for about six weeks now and the vet is saying she is in remission. We have her checked about this week, and, if all looks well, she will only need to go in for blood-sugar checks every six months.

I must admit I wish our vet had a frequent-visitor punch card, but I'm thrilled that our sweet Pickles is back to her sweet self. I love the quirky habits of this silky-soft kitty -- she only gets on our bed when Allen and I are both in bed for the night; she climbs into the rocking chair, crosses Allen's night stand, walks down his left side, hops over his feet or walks across the footboard to my side, comes up my right side and rests at my elbow. Every night this is her routine, sometimes several times in one night. I have never seen her get on our bed any other way.