Down to the Last Few Days

Looking back on the last several weeks since Lanie's birthday, it seems that much has happened. Mikayla came home for Easter weekend, and we had a wonderful time together. She entered right in to the musical portions of our services. It's always a blessing to see my kids using their talents in church! Nathanael played a trumpet piece, Mikayla played a beautiful offeratory, and she played her flute with our little orchestra. Nate will soon join them. I just HAVE to remember to order him a trumpet hymn book. I'm not very good at transposing, although he seems to be able to do it, just not as he is playing.  Mikayla headed back to school to finish up fourth quarter.

Mother's Day found us celebrating with Mom. We took her to The Oriental Jade in Bangor for their buffet. The kids made me the cutest cards with stickers and their own sweet sentiments hand written inside. Alana said, upon handing me hers, "Mama, I tried to use my very best penmanship for you." Yes, this Mom is picky about penmanship and doesn't feel that it should be an outdated subject just because we are all using computers so much. So she felt that this effort was a gift for me in and of itself. :)
Last week, we were able to finish up chemo treatments for Mom!  We were so pleased to finally get those over with. Now she will undergo a ct scan and meet with doctors to determine where to go from here. We are praising the Lord that there have been very little bad side affects with the chemo. There have been some, but not the horror stories that you sometimes hear. Blood platelet levels need to come up, and healing has begun!
We are scrambling this week to finish up with homeschooling. Nate got a little behind in some of his subjects, but should still be done next week. Lanie has finished all but Math and English, and she will be done next week. I have always been so happy to end a school year. This year found us really struggling with 8th grade. The idea that you have to study a little when every other year has been so easy, is not an idea that my son has taken kindly to. To him, if it doesn't come easy, why bother. Well, his mom doesn't agree, so we have worked hard to have him embrace a better attitude towards study and working hard on projects. He gets A's when he applies himself. And it bugs me that with just a tiny bit (less than an  hour) of study time, he can pull an A over a Science unit or History chapter. I would have had to study for days! And so, we will continue with this attitude adjustment next year. Hopefully, we will see some more mature attitudes take hold. Lanie has caught up to grade level in everything but math now. Taking a year(last year) to just work on weak areas was something that she really needed. I worked with her on reading, taking her all the way back to the beginning, finding that she is dyslexic. Sounds bad, but that was the best thing to find out, because then I knew what to do to help her in that area. She still hates to write, but is doing much better. Her reading is at grade level now, and all other subjects have come up to grade level as well. Her reading inability is what was holding her back. This summer I plan to work on math more aggressively. I am quite confused at her 'math mind', and right now we are working on long division. I can't figure out how a kid can do a long division problem with no mistakes, but finds it impossible to multiply. I have found a memory helper game that I need to order that I think will help. She CAN memorize, Praise be! But it doesn't make sense to me. So any suggestions on how to help her would be much appreciated.
Wednesday and Thursday, I cleaned out the school room completely, throwing away loads of stuff, packing away papers and finished curriculum, and putting aside "still good" stuff that I could maybe sell on ebay. I bought two new bookcases that we needed in there desperately. haha. I took out next years books that I have already and put them on the shelves. Just need to order consumables and Nathanael's online High School. His program comes with the books unless I can find some used. I also moved the kid's desks around to create a private nook for each of them. I'll probably add little things to their areas little by little, but the bulk of the work in there is done. It will be good to NOT have that job waiting for me at the end of summer.