Last week, I posted a note about my recent surgery that followed a litany of other challenges we’ve experienced over the Summer, including the doctor telling us Mason might die, and my resulting anxiety attack. I went to the doctor last week and posted an update to last week’s missive on Wednesday afternoon. If you read the issue before the update was posted, you can see the update HERE.

In other home office news, like all of you, we are concerned about the school shootings plaguing the nation. (Did you know there have been six school shootings in the U.S. in the past six weeks?! Some don’t even make headlines anymore!). We talked to the older children and asked if the schools have prepared them for a possible school shooting. The answer was no, they haven’t. Our daughter said she doesn’t think the school talks about it because they don’t want to give any of the kids any ideas. I guess I’ll have to send yet another letter to the superintendent. I’m sure he’s tired of hearing from me. The last time I contacted him was because the school lost Ali’s immunization records and then threatened to suspend her because I refused to sign a paper claiming we refused immunizations due religious/philosophical reasons. Signing that paper would have been a lie. She is fully immunized! We have, however, decided to wait to immunize Mason until he’s about five years old. The pediatrician isn’t happy with our decision, but has agreed to abide by it. He’s a great doctor because he’s followed up by sending us pro-immunization articles. Richard’s been doing his research and has found articles that counter the ideas and claims in the doctor’s articles. So, they’re having a healthy and informative debate, which is always good when the health of a child is concerned. The doctor is brand new to our town and I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to have a physician that obviously cares so much about his patients!

I had to call Ali’s counselor this week because we recently learned Ali has no real lunch period. And, she’s not the only one! It’s called “early lunch.” What that means is, for children whose schedules don’t have room for lunch, the children are permitted to leave one class five minutes early, eat during the period between classes (15 minutes), and then arrive at the next class five minutes late. Ali was missing the homework review each day in geometry and her grade in that class was rapidly dropping. It’s been four school days since my angry phone call and they still haven’t fixed Ali’s schedule. So, I’ll have to make another angry phone call tomorrow. In the meantime, we hired a tutor for Ali. She had her first tutoring session yesterday and she really likes her tutor.

We’re getting ready for visitors. Richard’s mom and her boyfriend are coming next week for five days. They haven’t seen Mason yet. My mom is also supposed to visit before the end of the month. All the children are very excited! I’m trying to make sure the house stays clean and trying to come up with creative, yummy and EASY recipes for the visits. If you have any ideas, please don’t hesitate to send me an email! I’m looking for entire meals that take just minutes to make but that give the impression I spent the entire day in the kitchen. Is there such a thing? I hope so!

This week’s Maxism:

We’ve had our windows open for the past couple of weeks because it’s been so nice outside. Max was sitting on our bed the other day, looking out the window at the cars passing below. He turned to me and said, “My fart just went out the window.” A moment later he frowned and said, “It came back…”

Hugs to all!
Ang

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