I live with Amelia Bedelia

My husband and I have known for a while that we live with Amelia Bedelia. For those of you not familiar with the books, Amelia is VERY literal, and it causes all kinds of comedic moments. JC has read many of her books starting back to when she was first reading, and I'm beginning to think she might not see the humor in them. Because, it turns out, she is exactly the same way. While we've joked about it for awhile, the last few months it has become more and more obvious. When we were driving to a family reunion in August, JC asked if we had turned the correct way. I answered (rather sarcastically), "No JC. I purposely told your father to make a wrong turn." She answered, "Great. Now we have to turn around and do it again." A couple of weeks ago we were working on math, and it asked her to double 5. She answered "25". I said that it wasn't multiplying, it was as if she had two fives. She said, "Oh, 55!". Nope, not quite. Last week on a test, she had missed a map question that asked her which dot was closest to 88 degrees latitude. I asked why she had chosen the dot that she chose when another was clearly ON the line. She explained to me that she had chosen the dot that was closest to the WORDS, 88 degrees latitude. Oh my! The best example was last night. I had not been thrilled initially with the Christmas tree my husband purchased. However, once it was decorated I had to admit it didn't look bad at all. As we were all watching Rudolph together as a family, my husband said, "I really like our new tree." I replied, "It's growing on me." JC immediately piped in with, "Huh? It doesn't look any taller to me." My, my, my, what else can we say????

When it rains it pours

It has rained, literally non-stop since sometime Saturday night. Just when we think it might actually let up a bit, it starts coming down harder. I can only imagine what kind of flooding may happen in our region from this!

HT is home and is a sick little guy. He's been iffy since early last week, but overall he didn't really seem that bad. That is, until last night. That poor child coughed all night, and none of us got much sleep. I took him to the doctor this morning, and he has bronchitis. Because he is asthmatic we want to make sure he doesn't develop walking pneumonia, so he's on an antibiotic, albuterol, and (the best of all!) cough medicine with codeine. I'm hopeful we can all get some sleep this evening.

We received a call from JC's principal this morning. They had a classroom spelling bee, and when JC missed her word she stormed across the room and threw a pencil. She was sent directly to the principal's office. I remember this happening once in second grade. She gets so angry at herself and just doesn't seem to know how to handle it. Unfortunately, her actions when angry at herself are a danger to others. I explained to the principal that while there was absolutely no excuse for her actions, I suspected the fact that she's as exhausted as the rest of us probably caused her behavior to be worse than normal. And then there is the fact that it's spelling...for some very odd reason she expects herself to be absolutely perfect at spelling. She is not this way about any other subject, but when it comes to spelling anything less than a 100% can send her into tears. I have no idea why, but she's always been that way.

I'm scheduled to work so my wonderful husband is staying home tomorrow. HT isn't allowed back to school until Wednesday at the earliest, and possibly later in the week. I'm so grateful to my husband for being able and willing to do that, and hopefully HT will be feeling better quickly!

Black Friday

I'm happy to report there was absolutely no shopping done by me today whatsoever. I don't like shopping, and I don't like crowds, so you can imagine how Black Friday is not my idea of fun. However, my husband seems to have done some online purchasing (based on what my credit card says), and he also ventured out today to try to buy us a new Christmas tree. We have always put two trees up, but this year there is no room in our dining room for the second one. We knew that meant the one in the living room would have to be bigger because the old one didn't have enough room for all of our ornaments. This new tree was proving to be more challenging than I had anticipated. First of all, almost all the trees I saw were pre-lit and I did NOT want that. I'm picky about how my lights are on a tree and I've never seen a pre-lit tree that lived up to my standards. Secondly, the unlit trees that we were able to find were almost sold out. Apparently I'm supposed to think about trees in October, not at Thanksgiving. Fortunately, he found one this morning at Target, and I'm very excited to work on getting it up tomorrow evening. First though, friends will be coming over and watching the OSU/Michigan game. Go Buckeyes!

Thanksgiving tradition

A few years ago my husband and I began a Thanksgiving tradition all our own. The night before Thanksgiving, he and I sit down with a glass of wine (or two) and watch all the Thanksgiving episodes from the sitcom Friends. The Thanksgiving episodes are many of the best, and honestly, some of them are some of the funniest things I have ever seen on television. One even has Eddie Cahill in it, which doesn't hurt either! :) My husband is getting ready to make a cheesecake to take to my grandmother's house tomorrow and the kids are outside sweeping and raking leaves, but after dinner it is all about my husband and I sitting down to our DVD's!

Mom guilt

Today I have a very serious case of "mom guilt". JR called about 30 minutes after school started to ask if I could bring him his homework. I explained that HT was home sick, and since we are having absolutely miserable weather, I wasn't going to take him out in this weather. I could tell that he was disappointed, and we both know that this is going to adversely affect his grade. I can't help but feel guilty. I've tried to tell myself that it's a good lesson to learn. All he had to do was to put the homework in his folder when he finished, instead of being lazy and just putting it back on his clipboard. Hopefully he'll remember this lesson next time. I try to tell myself that if I had been working today or out running errands, the result would've been the same. But since I told him I wouldn't bring it up, I have this terrible guilty feeling that what he is going to remember is that I wasn't there for him. I know that I'm there for him in hundreds of ways every day, but I can't help but feel the guilt!

Feel like I can breathe again

After the last few weeks, I'm finally starting to feel as though I can breathe freely again. It's nice to have two full days in a row off work, but even these aren't exactly relaxing. Yesterday there were two doctor appointments to shuffle to, and today HT is home sick. Fortunately he doesn't seem to have the stomach flu (although he has mentioned his stomach hurting) nor is he running a fever. However, he has ZERO energy. It's been years since I've seen him this lethargic. Hopefully a day of rest will have him back to his old self again soon!

I'm so looking forward to this weekend. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and there is so much for which to be thankful. Last week my husband lost his aunt, and we lost my mother's best friend, who was like a member of the family. I'm so grateful that we both have our parents and that I still have both of my grandmothers. This year we are spending thanksgiving with my dad's side of the family. I haven't spent Thanksgiving with them since 2001. My grandfather was still alive then, and they hadn't even yet moved to the retirement community. I can't believe it's been that long since I celebrated with that side! This evening my husband and I are going to see Les Miserables and have dinner out with my mother and sister. Friday my mother's side of the family is getting together for a family outing to the newest Muppet movie, then we are gathering with friends to visit with our friends in from out of town. Saturday is the OSU/Michigan game, and hopefully our Christmas decorations will be up over the weekend. In spite of the many plans that we have, I'm so blessed to be able to do so many things with friends and family!

It was a long week

Last week was one of the longest our family has experienced in a very long time. When the week began, I was scheduled to work three days, but I ended up working all day, everyday. Tuesday was one of the longest days we've had in a long time. I went straight from working at school to volunteering at school by being in the library for the school book fair. Then we had two separate parent teacher conferences. During the book fair, my mother called to let me know that her best friend had passed away. We had been told the day before that hospice had been called in, and I'm glad that her suffering at the very end was rather short. It was also at the book fair that my sister called to let me know my cousin's husband (only 28 years old) had been taken to the e/r with stroke like symptoms. Fortunately, we learned two days later that apparently it was a rare form of a severe headache and he should be fine. That evening about 10, my sister texted me. I couldn't imagine who could be texting me so late. Normally my sister wouldn't, but on the other side of my family a cousin had let her know that yet another cousin's husband had been rushed to the e/r with chest pains. Fortunately he too appears to be okay, but I'll be honest, it was a very long day. At first I was finding myself thinking how unlucky our family was, but ultimately I decided that no, we were indeed very lucky. Both Eric & Russ should be fine and we are so grateful! JR had a major social studies project due last week, and my husband helped him a great deal with that. I managed to squeeze in the normal responsibilities of cooking dinner and doing laundry, and even managed to get everyone packed so we could leave after school Friday to head for my in-laws for an early Thanksgiving. My husband managed to take two wrong turns before we even left the area (this did not instill confidence in his driving for the evening!) and it was nearly 10:30 that night before we got there. To say that I was exhausted is an understatement! We had a wonderful dinner with the family, and after church and brunch this morning we were back on our way home. It was an absolutely miserable drive home (it rained fairly hard most of the trip), but we made it safely, and we are all looking forward to such a short week. We have so many fun plans next weekend, and we have so very many things for which to be thankful!