Big, small

I could tell you about all the small, every day things going on in our life right now but somehow that doesn't seem appropriate.  Sometimes, talking about the squash sprouts or my knitting doesn't explain our life right now, or the life changing things that have occurred in the last few weeks.  It's been awful  and brilliant all at the same time because so many good things come out of a challenge.

I don't however wake up on a Monday morning (as in last Monday) and say to myself, "My world will be turned upside down over the next few days, let's get started!"  Actually last Monday, I was just thinking about how I was going to manage with three kids, soccer schedules and basically keeping it together while my husband was out of town for the week.  It's my job to try and keep it all together.  Even though I feel like I fail miserably sometimes, I'm up for the task, in a serious kind of way.

Some things have been brewing actually.  One big thing is Amelia's soccer team that she's been on since kindergarten has been turning into a negative experience rather than positive one.  I guess that's all I'm willing to reveal for the sake of everyone involved but something, everything was going to reach a fever pitch by the middle of the previous week.  Amelia, Jonathan and I made the very hard decision to quit the team in the middle of the season.  Not really an easy thing to decide especially since we didn't want to leave the team hanging, so to speak.  She's known these girls for so long, since kindergarten.  They've hung out almost every week for over 7 years.  Big change.  Amelia was relieved but I was a bit emotional about it.

Another thing that's been brewing is the on-line charter school Solomon has been attending this year.  Now, I wouldn't actually admit this but because we're friends I will tell you that I was really at a loss with Solomon last year.  He's been struggling with a learning disability and I thought I needed some support.  Quite the opposite happened.  Although we got some really good reading help for him, he was prodded and poked for the first few months and that really annoyed me.  But, I had to think about the end result and if we had to endure some pain for two days a week of work with a speech pathologist, I was willing to get through it.  Then CRT week came.  I thought we were prepared, I thought my son's special needs were to be taken in to account through his IEP (goodness, I wouldn't recommend going through that process).  I thought that he was going to have someone read him the test but we walked into a room full, (FULL, twenty kids to be exact) who needed the test read to them.  And there was no way my son would/could sit there for 2.5 hours that day and the next and feel any better about himself.  (I found out later that during the reading comprehension part, the passages wouldn't be read to him but the question could have been)  The "special ed" teacher was a mean, crotchety woman who didn't make me feel at ease whatsoever.  At that moment, a large gong sounded in my brain and I had to do what any mama bear would do.  I politely took my son, walked out of the classroom toward my car and drove him away from that place.  I don't consider myself a rebel.  I can be quite the conformer when it comes to obeying the law.  But I just couldn't put him through that and risk throwing all the work away that we've been doing to restore his self confidence because of mandatory state testing (geez).  We got kicked out of the school the next day.  Consequences folks.

The last big doozy hit on Sunday when Jonathan was home but, I was pretty well spent by that time and didn't take it very well at first.  I'm okay with it now.  You see, something I haven't told you about is that we've been working really hard at getting ourselves debt free.  I once again have to be a bit vague here only out of privacy and that it's embarrassing and humiliating.  But, that all came to a head over the weekend.  But there was a so very much good (I mis-spelled that god at first.  Very appropriate) that's come out of it.  We are closer to our goal and I see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I think I might see some double rainbows there too.  It's been hard this last year while on this journey and if we make it through the next few weeks, I'll be very happy.

Have you ever heard me talk this much?

The pictures that I took here were taken yesterday just before Jonathan and Amelia hopped into the car to head to San Francisco, to spend the night at his mom's house, to be taken to the airport, to board a ship, to cruise down to Central America and then off to the Galapagos Islands.  I am truly humbled that my mother-in-law is giving my daughter this experience.  Thank you Nancy!  Sigh.  My, my, my Amelia is growing up and I can't stop it.  Luckily my husband isn't going.  That would be totally unfair.  He just called and said he safely dropped his mom and Amelia off at the airport.  He said he was a little sad, which means a lot because he's an engineer and they don't generally show their emotions.

Big changes here.  Next time I'll tell you about our sprouting squash plants okay?