Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

It is interesting that I post that this week when 10 days ago I was posting about Chanukkah...  For some of you it may seem odd, but for me it is right.  I think Chanukkah came first - without it we would have no Messiah, no Savior, no remnant of Israel, perhaps.  I don't really say any longer that we wouldn't have any Christmas, but perhaps not even that.  Why do I distinguish this?  In the past few years I've come to learn that the origins of Christmas really didn't start with Yeshua's birth.  Christmas started as the holiday of other religions and got molded by our western cultures to become what it is today.  It isn't in the Bible, and Yeshua likely wasn't even born that day.  This used to bother me, and I had a time of considering not even wanting to celebrate it because I didn't want to "accidentally" be celebrating a "pagan" holiday.  This year, I am realizing, and trying to come to terms with the fact that I am an American Gentile Christian as well as a grafted-into-the-Abrahamic-covenant-Yeshua-follower.  I don't even know what that really means half the time, but I'm seeing that there is, indeed, a difference between who I am, and the Jews.  It is actually a welcome word for me, as trying to be grafted into a people who don't even know I exist, or let alone want me, was quite confusing to say the least.  I do think that one day we will all be one, and love one another, and until then, I will continue to love and pray for everyone, but for now, I am caught somewhere in between.

Anyway, where was I going with this?  I think this year, I can embrace Christmas again as a cultural holiday.  It is part of my American upbringing and part of my Christian culture.  I don't agree with everything about it, but it is part of who I am, so therefore I will let it be.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Day Before Solstice

Time flies when you're busy.  Having 4 kids is just nuts, especially when 2 are sick.

Jaedyn had her procedure last week and came through okay.  It took her about 5 days to get any sort of appetite back, which is hard for a mama to watch when is already so underweight.  I've spoken with the gastroenterologist a couple times this week.  She is still leaning towards Crohn's disease as a diagnosis, although the testing has not been conclusive so far.  Today she is undergoing another cleanout, and tomorrow she and her daddy will fly to Anchorage and do what is called a "capsule endoscopy".  Essentially this procedure is where she swallows a dime size capsule that has a camera inside it.  Is a camera goes throughout her GI system it takes thousands of pictures.  This enables the doctors to see inside her small bowel.  On her colonoscopy Jaedyn had one small area that was suspicious for Crohn's.  The gastroenterologist thinks that she probably has much more widespread disease in her small bowel, and feels this test may be helpful in nailing down the diagnosis.  They will come back tomorrow night.

My son, Josiah, has had a cold since the beginning of the week, and a swollen left lower eyelid for 3 or 4 days.  Yesterday he came home from school early with an earache, and today both ears are hurting and he is running a fever.  He has pretty much slept most of the time since he came home from school yesterday afternoon.  He watched TV for a little while last night, but then asked to go back to bed.  Today we brought him to the doctor, who is, along with me, puzzled by the swelling under his eye and the redness of his conjunctiva on that side.  He thinks it may be a cellulitis.  Now he is on eyedrops and antibiotics for the eye and a double ear infection.  I'm hoping he has a quick turnaround and can get back to school tomorrow, otherwise I may have to stay home with him while his daddy and sister are in Anchorage.

Sorry, no new pictures today.

Jaedyn and I are in Anchorage for a few days while she sees a gastroenterologist and undergoes some testing for failure to gain weight and delayed puberty.  Yesterday she saw the doctor who is suspicious of Crohn's disease. 

This morning she had an MR endoscopy (nasty contrast didn't go down well).  Tomorrow she will have an upper and lower endoscopy (scopes).  Today we are doing the prep.  She had to take two little laxatives and now is having to drink an entire bottle of miralax split up in two 32 oz bottles of yellow or green gatorade.  Already her stools are clearing up.  I didn't think it would take too long since she hardly eats.

After she recovers tomorrow from her procedures, we will head back to Soldotna.  A storm is coming in tomorrow but I am hoping to beat it.  Our test got moved up from 1:00 pm to 10:30 am, which will be helpful to keep us from missing it... 

Thanks all for your good thoughts for Jaedyn and for your prayers.

Dark is our Winter, Long is our Night

Sunset in Kenai

The words from that song just popped into my head to describe what is happening in Alaska these days, but it isn't that we're in a dark place spiritually... just geographically!  Our sun rises around 10 am and sets around 4 pm.  Days will continue to get shorter as we near the winter solstice on the 21st.



Sunrise in Kenai

Jaedyn has been homeschooling about a month now, and I must say it is going well.  I love the Beautiful Feet curriculum and books that go with it.  We've decided on Apologia General Science since I last posted, and I think that it has gone well too.  Jaedyn is loving being at home and not having the stress of the social circles in junior high.  She is so motivated to make homeschooling work that she does her work cheerfully and completely without any complaining.  This is a big change from her schoolwork at school and homeschooling last time.  She knows, however, that if she gives us grief she will be put back into school, and absolutely does not want that!  By Christimas break, she will finish her first semester of junior high, and I am very proud of the young lady she is turning out to be.  She is doing Home Ec for one of her classes, and has been planning and helping to prepare a few meals (including Thanksgiving), doing knitting, took a SafeSitters class at the hospital, and has made some desserts.



Jaedyn in her new coat showing a hat she knitted for one of the infants in our church.

Ciara is thriving at the private school.  Socially she hasn't made any close friends, but academically she is shining and, I think, loving the challenge of high school.  I am happy to see her happy and doing so responsibly.  Last weekend she and I went to help at a camp called Cristo Vive.  It was for children with disabilities.  We had a great time and I was very proud of the responsibility Ciara took on with this camp.



Ciara on left with her "friend" from camp, who, as it turns out, was a perfect match for her.
Both loved to draw and do crafts, etc.  Both are also beautiful young ladies.

Eliana is having issues with grumping about anything that she doesn't want to do - be it school work, going to church, or wearing socks.  You name it, if she doesn't feel like doing it, she is going to give me grief about suggesting it.  This attitude is affecting her grades in attitude and behavior at school.  She too is getting all As, like her sister, Ciara, but it makes me sad that she is not getting As in attitude and behavior.  She is asking to homeschool as well, but I don't see us doing that with an 8 year old with an attitude when I am working full time.  Besides, she is a very social girl, and I think this would make her lonely for other children.  She doesn't get along very well with Jaedyn either.



Eliana is on the bottom of this sledding pic, and Josiah in the back in blue.
 This was Josiah's 6th birthday party.

Josiah has been having trouble with behavior in school too.  He even got called to the principal's office this past month for having his name on the board.  He is trying to rectify his behavior and is getting his name on the board less.  He doesn't do anything mean, he just doesn't listen well and tends to get out of his seat without permission.  He isn't ADHD, just has trouble with impulse control, I guess.  Academically, he still shines. 



Josiah (in front) playing with a buddy on his 6th birthday.

We came across a math program for Jaedyn called Life of Fred.  I bought the elementary books as well and am thrilled with how excited Josiah and Eliana are with doing math when I get home from work.  They run up to me and say, "Can we do math now, Mom?!"  I'm loving it!

Monday I will be taking Jaedyn to Anchorage for a visit with the gastroenterologist and to have some testing done on Wednesday.  We'll have to stay in a hotel for two nights.  She is extremely underweight, but finally, in the last week, has started some of her female pubertal changes.  I'm very glad to see this happening as she is now 13.5, and this has been delayed.  Keep us in your prayers.  This is hard on Mom to see her have health problems, and even harder to watch her do invasive testing.  I especially am praying that she won't have any seizures from the stress of it all.

Our Curriculum Plans

Jennifer asked what I'll be using.  She probably remembers that I used to be a Sonlight user when we homeschooled until 2010.  We won't be using Sonlight this year.  It really is too much stuff and overwhelming.  We want to keep things simple this year so we are doing this:

History:  Medieval times (by student request).  Beautiful Feet medieval history.  This will provide us with a good spine and lots of good reading (not too much).  It has projects to do and links to further learning resources on the internet.  I've also ordered one or two Usborne books to go along with it just for fun.

Science:  Right now we have a science program, but I think it may be a little too hard for Jaedyn to do as an independent study, and her daddy isn't going to have a lot of time to do other stuff.  So this subject is still up in the air.  We may depend on internet sites a lot and let her study stuff she is interested in until we figure it all out.  She has an interest in geology and rocks, so we'll start there.

Math:  The Life of Fred Math.  She will be doing PreAlgebra, but may start earlier just to get the hang of it.  Last week she did the Teaching Textbook tests to see what level she is ready for, and she could do either preAlgebra or 7th grade math.  We didn't try any higher.  Perhaps she could have been ready for Algebra, but again, I don't want any pressure this year.

Home Ec/Art:  She is planning and will prepare Thanksgiving dinner this year.  I will teach her other household skills and her dad will do things with her in the kitchen.  We'll also enroll her in an art class locally if we can find one.

English:  The Beautiful Feet history program will offer suggestions for vocabulary development.  She'll also do some writing projects with her history program.  For grammar I'm looking at "Caught Ya" but I'm not completely sold on it.  Any suggestions you've liked for 7th grade?

Typing:  She is learning to keyboard with Mavis Beacon.

A very full week

Following another crisis of returning to school, my husband and I decided to make the plunge and take our 13 year old out of school and try to homeschool her again.  This week has been filled with pouring over curriculi, planning and researching, etc. 

My husband was sick at the beginning of the week with what was probably strep throat.  Around Wednesday we got him some antibiotics and he got better quickly.    Until then I was working all day, then coming home and doing what I could to nurse him, help the kids with homework, come up with something to eat, etc.  Thankfully Tim had mad up a lot of left overs that we were able to use up during those days!

About Thursday I started with a little scratchy throat.  Determined to use essential oils and have an experience myself like everyone raves over with the oils, I opted to not use antibiotics or traditional meds.  I drank lemon oil in my water or Slim and Sassy blend.  By Friday night I was shivering with chills in bed with a fever of 102.5.  I was gargling a nasty oregano-lemon mixture, applying eucalyptus and melaleuca to my swollen neck glands, and diffusing different things into the air to breathe.  Peppermint for my fever.  Nothing was working.  I woke up Saturday morning early and my kidneys were inflammed.  Ugh!  I opted to keep doing the oils but also started tylenol and ibuprofen for the fever, now terrible headache and inflammation.  This gave me the added side effect of wet sheets from breaking the fevers, but didn't keep them away for good.  On Saturday my husband picked up a box of more oils I had ordered last weekend and I started the much acclaimed "On Guard".  I continued the nasty gargles of oregano and lemon.  This continued until this morning when I was just getting worse.  I was miserable and aching all over, my throat ached, and I had a fever again of 101.  I called my colleague and, praise God, she was willing to call something for me in to a pharmacy on her day off!  By 1:30 I took my first amoxicillin, and as of about 2 hours ago, I am feeling better than I have all weekend!  I haven't stopped the oils altogether (still using some on my wart, swollen glands and cold sore that is trying to erupt), but have come to the definite conclusion that for me when an antibiotic is known to treat something effectively, why do all the hocus pocus of essential oils?  I could have been better Friday night!

Yesterday I went to a meeting with Ciara regarding a camp for disabled children that we are going to be helping with in two weeks.  Fortunately I was feeling okay enough for that meeting during all my sickness, but went home drained and hit the bed again.  We are looking forward to 3 days of serving in this way.

Josiah learns to ice skate

This is the week when the ice finally froze solid enough that we could go and have some fun.  On Saturday we went out and my oldest daughter and my husband worked hard to clear the tall grasses in a place that we could play on.

Then Josiah decided to go get his ice skates that he had gotten from a garage sale this summer and put them on.  He has never ice skated, but he picked it up pretty well.

I've heard of people using chairs to help people learn to skate, so I brought an old desk chair out from the house for him to use.  Unfortunately it wasn't as heavy as it needed to be, so it would fall over if he fell backward.  It did work to have the kids ride on across the ice though!

After a while we pulled an old milk carton out of recycling and played a form of soccer on the ice.  That was fun!  I only fell a few times...  Our other daughter, Eliana, was out there too, but for some reason I didn't get any pictures of her sweet little self.  I was pretty comical because I went out in my dress and boots, so it was probably a good thing no pics were taken of me!

The next day my 13 year old came down with an upper respiratory infection that has sore throat, fever, runny nose and aching all over.  She's still sick.  It is hard to get that girl fattened up when she can't eat, or to keep up her school work, for that matter!  Sigh. :(

Another thing that has been on my mind are essential oils.  I joined up with DoTerra as a PVC (whatever that stands for) so that I can get my oils discounted.  I've got Jaedyn taking vitamins for her health, oils for her infection, oils for her seizures, and now I also have a diffuser for aroma therapy.  Here's hoping for a great turnaround in her health.