9-29-2014 The Carpenter has a Cold

Charlie has been sick since he came home from work on Friday. He took the kids to their fall ball game Saturday morning, then came home afterwards and slept the entire day. Sunday he worked 10-ish until around 5pm, then came home and went to bed. Last night he was awake coughing and carrying on around midnight and sounded awful. It seems too early in the season for him to get the typical respiratory problems he usually develops later in the winter. I'm hoping he went to the doctor today as I instructed him to. Waiting for him to come home from work to see how his day went.

10-5-2013

We went to the historic homes tour today. Enjoyable as always. Kathy watched the kids. Mom & Dad were supposed to, but Mom is having a hypertensive crisis. Her BP was as high as 240/120. I'm taking her for a renal doppler on Tuesday.

Luke is doing well in 5th grade cyber school. He says he wants to go back to school after Christmas. I've talked to Dr. Shoudt about it and we'll get a plan together to ease him back in.

Lily is doing well in 4th grade. She likes Mrs. Miller and is looking forward to signing up for basketball this week. She also just signed up to play the flute.

I'm enjoying working every weekend on the rehab. unit. It's working out perfectly.

9-25-2014 Work Stress = Looking forward to Adults Only Weekend

Work has been quite stressful for me of late. The kind of stress that carries over from the weekend and drags me down all week. I have been discussing it at length with Charlie and have decided to drop down my hours from every weekend to per diem. I will need to tell them tomorrow.

I want to put it behind me and move forward before the first weekend in October. That's when the kids go to Mom and Dad's and we do our annual historic homes tour. I am very much looking forward to it, this year more than ever!

9-18-2014 Fall Ball, School, and New Routines

I think we are all settling in to our back-to-school routines pretty nicely. The kids have a few more weeks of fall ball (practice Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 - 7:30, games Saturdays and/or Sundays).

I wake them each weekday morning at 6:15 so they have enough time to dress, gather together last minute school items, eat breakfast, and have a little screen time before going off to school. I or Charlie drop them off at school anywhere between 7:10 and 7:30. I pick Luke up at 9:10 and we often run a few errands before coming home to eat (of course) then do cyber school.

We have started going to bed at 7:30 pm since I'm waking them each morning at 6:15 am and they are still asleep when I knock on their doors. I have a feeling as it gets dark earlier, I may even bump the time up to 7pm. We'll see….

9-11-2014 Remembering 13 Years Later

I talked to both kids about the significance of today leading up to and including this morning. After I picked Luke up from math class, I asked if they did anything in school to remember 9/11. He said they had moments of silence and he was very disappointed that some kids talked right through those moments. I was so proud of him for recognizing this as wrong.

We got our new refrigerator yesterday. GE with French doors and freezer on the bottom. It's much more spacious than the last one.

9-4-2014 Luke gets a new bike

Luke has got a new bike. It's a mountain bike he bought today at Walmart. He did lots of online research into exactly what he wanted with special focus on brakes and gear shifting. He did not pay for the bike with his money. Instead he and Charlie have worked out a deal (scheme) where Luke will load buckets of wood for the outdoor furnace from now until Christmas. In other words, he's paying off the bike debt with manual labor.

Lily went back to school today. She missed yesterday with pink eye. Hopefully she feels alright and has a good day. They have baseball practice tonight and the first game is on Saturday.

9-4-2014 First Illness Casualty of Back to School

Lily missed school yesterday. She has pink eye. I was planning on taking her to convenient care after school on Tuesday if she still had a sore throat and bit of earache which had started Friday afternoon. When she got off the bus, her eyes were blood red. So, she's on the antibiotic drops for conjunctivitis.

Charlie and I went to the local flea market yesterday morning around 0630 to pick up 6 pairs of shutters I'd found the week before. They are currently painted green and Charlie is going to hang a pair or two to see how we like that color. They are the perfect size for our windows and were quite a find!

Luke is struggling to adjust to cyber school. He was in tears yesterday. This happens every year and I feel quite bad for him. We did finish the day about an hour earlier than the day before, so that was a definite plus. Then we both sat on the sofa together and watched Iron Man on DVD. I think he needed to veg out a little bit, as did I.

Adventures in grilling continue. We had steaks, hamburgers, and hot dogs last night. Even Charlie admitted he is getting quite sick of eating so much meat. The kids and I agree. More veggies, less meat!

9-1-2014 Labor Day Party and Reflections on Summer

Mom and Dad are coming for lunch. We will be cooking on Charlie's new Weber gas grill. We've never had a grill in the past. I've been afraid of them. But this past spring Charlie became quite adamant that he wanted one after driving home from developments where lots of folks were using grills and entire neighborhoods smelled fabulous with steaks on the barbie. So, we made a deal that if our business checking account stayed at a certain amount for over a month with no commercial credit, he'd get a grill. It did, so he did. Turns out, we love it. The food is absolutely fantastic. Both kids are even in agreement the burgers and steaks are right up there with our favorite restaurant's Austin's.

Mom and Dad will be bringing things from their garden like basil, zucchini, tomatoes, squash, spinach, etc. They're also bringing things they picked up at the butcher shop last week and vacuum sealed and froze for us. Not sure what exactly we'll do after lunch. Maybe we'll play cards or a board game if it's hot and muggy or raining outside.

All summer our weather has been outstanding with temp's in the low to mid 80s and low humidity. The past few days have been more typical summer weather than we've had all summer. It's been mid to high 8os with high humidity. Strange that it comes so late in the summer. Wonder what kind of fall we'll have?

Luke and Lily go back to school tomorrow. It will be another 4 day week, like last week, which I think is good to help ease them back into the routine. Luke will start K12 cyber school tomorrow as well. At least that's the plan. We have all the materials, but the site isn't updated with his classes yet. I really wish it was so I could look everything over ahead of time. They'll also have baseball practice Tuesday and Thursday. Busy, busy, busy…something I do not enjoy. Lily has not embraced baseball yet, and is not enjoying practice thus far. We're hoping that changes as she gets more experience with it. Surprisingly, Luke seems to really be enjoying it.