Our Sweet Encounter

I was stressing today about a doctor's appointment today b/c I had to take my kids. This office is known for having typically loooong wait times, and my kids aren't known for being the quietest and calmest in public - or anywhere else for that matter! Anyway, armed with Lego magazines and mp3 players, we arrived and sat down. An older (75 year old or so) man starts playing his harmonica and looking at my kids. Jacob says, "Mom, that older man is looking at me funny."  The man finally just spoke up and started asking them what he should play next, and for the next 25 minutes, they played name that tune and he took requests in the waiting room! Mattie just can't help but dance, so she was quickly up cuttin' a rug to his tunes.  He asked her to marry him. :) So as frustrated as I get with their complete lack of inhibition, and therefore noise and activity level in public, today I was very thankful as it manifested itself in friendliness to this lonely old man.  I think all four of us walked away blessed today, as were several others in the room.

Quite frankly, I desperately needed this. I have been feeling like I'm stuck in the middle of a spiritual desert in a way I've never experienced before. I'm feeling like a fraud as I sing praise songs in front of my church and as I read the Jesse Tree devotions with my kids and teach Sunday School. I have confessed it all to God, begged Him to change my heart, help me see more of Him, help me reconcile the Old Testament Him with the New Testament Him, etc. This morning I asked Him just to fill my heart with love for Him. And immediately after this encounter I caught myself thinking, "Thank you, Jesus, for that sweetness." I like thinking that way! It just seems to have eluded me as I'm hung up on some OT things.  I'm very thankful for that small oasis in the midst of my recent emptiness.

Fall School

We've had fun this year so far!  I've found a good groove for schooling both kids at the same time and having a two year old two days a week.  Mattie and I have not gotten into a good Five in a Row routine, and that makes me sad, but I hope I can figure it out soon.  Mostly it's a lack of planning on my part.  

Here are a few things the kids have done...

 

 Jacob made a poster advertising for a trip to the New World.

We read about sheep and Mattie made this one with real sheep wool!

  

We have loved our Apologia Astronomy!  (These are all ideas we used out of the book.)  We get together every other week with two other families to do the experiments/activities.

 We poured lava on a dusty surface to see how it shaped the surface of Venus.

 

 Jacob made a comic about life on Venus and shared it with his friends.  Something about having 25 kids, 10 of whom who drowned in the lava and the others complaining that they wanted to go back to Earth so they could have some snow and celebrate Christmas.  Boys are weird!

We learned how radar worked.  We stuck this stick down through the paper and charted the depth to which it sank.  The kids colored in their charts and we revealed the surface below!

 

 

   The picture revealed!

    

 We separated the colors in a black marker.

 

 We learned about the suns rays by melting chocolate with a magnifying glass.  (Of course we burned up leaves too, but the chocolate part was much more fun.)

  

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 We've painted our fall trees with arms (trunks) and fingerprints (leaves)!  This was a pinterest idea.  :)

 

 We went to the apple orchard, and here's my animal loving girl enjoying the goats.

And I don't have a photo of this, but I've discovered Mattie is a total Math head.  Math pages are her reward for getting her phonics pages completed!  She loves to do Math.  By Christmas she'll be finished with her kindergarten Math book and we'll be doing the first grade one after the first of the year.  The best part of this is that she'll be ready for Teaching Textbooks sooner.  :)  I'll still have to add the Critical Thinking book for thinking out of the box a bit... those pages are her favorites!

Wanna hear about my day?

So two posts in one day!  Sitting on the couch will do that to me, I guess.  I guess before I share about my today I should explain why I'm in a boot for anyone who doesn't know: This summer at Joni and Friend's camp someone rolled up onto my foot with their power wheelchair and stayed there for about a minute while I explained to her that she was on it and waited for her to switch modes and scootch it back off.  Yes... Ouch.  Fast forward to 17 weeks later, a neuroma, nerve damage, other soft tissue damage and a stress fracture, I'm in a walking cast like this for at least a month to see if we can make some progress, because there has been little in the weeks since the injury.  Unfortunately, crush injuries are known to be difficult because it's often hard to pinpoint the real details of the injury.  So I wait.



And on the first day I got the boot I had to run some errands.  On the way out the door Jacob gives me a hug, point to the boot and says, "You're going out in public in that thing?"  As if I chose this... and didn't have a matching one.


So today, we had Women's Bible Study at church, piano lessons, then I had to go by the doctor and get a new boot. It was is supposed to be inflatable but wasn't working, so it was like wearing a shoe two sizes too big. It was terrible! I could tell in the first 3 seconds the other one was so much better! So I arrived home to a lot of dog puke and a nasty dog who had walked in said puke while she was in her gated spot while we were gone all morning. Yeah. Ew. I cleaned the floor and bathed the dog (while wearing the boot - a feat in and of itself). And just for the record, dog eye boogers are NASTY and take way too much work to get off in the bathtub!  Ahem... Then stood up holding the wet, towel-wrapped dog, popped something really loud in my knee (not the same leg as is in the boot) and I can hardly stand up. What else in the world is going to happen...?! It was actually very comical as I sat down (because I felt like my knee just wouldn't carry me) now both legs compromised, b/c the boot is a rocker boot (think round bottom) so it's terrible for balance. But it's 6 hours later now and hurts now a lot more than it did then, so it's not so funny anymore, except what else can it really be but funny?  Besides, I don't have the energy for it to be sad. 

I have learned I am a terrible sitter! I just keep wanting to get up and pick up, do the dishes, put the dog out, tuck the kids in, but I just physically can't, especially if it involves stairs. 

So as much as I'm still laughing about the calamity of the afternoon, I sit here with ice on my knee, taking another dose of my anti-inflammatory and googling to find information that will prove my nurse-sister wrong and convince myself that this really isn't anything serious.  :)  Except it's not feeling not so serious as the hours go on.  I really hope I can sleep well and wake up feeling better, in one limb anyway!


So how was your day??