Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Homeschooling





I thought this was cute enough to share on my blog. It was passed onto me by another homeschooling friend. Homeschooling isn't so much on the "fringes" of society as it used to be. We still run into people who think the above thoughts.

One time I was at a Pampered Chef party and an older lady was told that I homeschool my 4 children. She quizzed me about it. A few minutes later she introduced me to her daughter this way, "This is my daughter, whateverhernamewas. She's a REAL school teacher."

I didn't say anything. Yes, I know, shocking for me, right? I'm not going to debate homeschooling with anyone. Most of the time, I don't offer the tidbit that our family homeschools. I don't want to answer the same questions that are always asked.

"How are your children socialized?" - If you've been around my children you know that they are not timid, little creatures kept at home with their noses in books all day long. Besides, I figure there are four of them and beating each other up and annoying each other qualifies for some "socialization".

"How do you know that your children are keeping up with the public schools?"  - Uuumm, the last time I checked, the public schools were not doing so hot in teaching our children. So any comparisons to public schools really make me laugh. I won't laugh in your face but I'm laughing on the inside.

Anyway, I do love homeschooling most days. There are some days when I wish the yellow bus would pull up outside and wisk my kids away. We believe that God appointed us primary teachers of our children. We don't want to just teach book learning but character training. We may not be bringing up the next "Einsteins" but hopefully, we will have joyful, well adjusted children who love God and want to serve Him all their days.

Then, we will know we have been successful teachers.



Thursday, May 17, 2012

I'm Back

My apologies for not posting sooner. My post the day after surgery was obviously done while under the effects of morphine. :0 I hate that stuff but I was feeling no pain that day! Anyway, this has been a tough journey. I've started several posts only to stall out and close them up without posting.

I came home from the hospital four days after surgery. I had 6 drains but they took out two before I left. I had a drain under each of my arms on my body and two coming out the front of my pubic bone. Let me tell you how fun those two were. I spent the first few days just wrapped up in a blanket because I couldn't figure out what to wear that wouldn't irritate those drains.

I did a lot of sleeping at home that first week. I stopped taking any of the pain meds they gave me 5 days after surgery. I took a pill and it made me throw up and I decide I would take the pain over the cookie tossing. One of my incisions is a cut from hip to hip so sneezing, coughing or barfing was something to be avoided if at all possible.

My mom and dad and my man were such huge help. I needed a ton of it. I couldn't walk very easily, or shower myself, or go to the bathroom without help. I couldn't sleep laying down.

Let me just tell you, I was a big, ole mess. Thank God that He designed our bodies to recover quite quickly from such serious surgery. I'm now doing most of my normal things (well, I'm not back to exercising just yet), just a little slower and I still take a nap during the day.

I went to the doctor today for another check up. He removed my drains on the last visit (YAY). This time, I have about a two inch area on my abdominal incision that is infected. So today he cleaned it out and packed it with gauze and showed me how to do it so I could change the dressing twice a day. Other than that, he admired his handy work and said everything was looking great!

I will tell you that I spent several days after surgery wondering if this was worth it. Now that I'm out a few more weeks from the surgery, I am glad that I did it. I feel now like it's not so obvious that I battled breast cancer just by looking at my chest. I can chose who I want to share my story with.

We are heading out to Iowa and then Colorado this Saturday for a niece and two nephews graduations. We are all looking forward to getting out of Dodge.

Thanks for your prayers, care and concern.

Hugs!


Lord, my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me. Psalm 30:2