In my life this week…

It is a bad sign when you have to read your last post to remember what happen last week as apposed to the week before. I was all ready to tell you all about Oliver again. It has been one of those weeks.

Our week started of with Relay for Life, which raises money for the cancer society. We were all to tired and stressed from the week before. That led to a cranky family. Add to that pouring rain for the night and we ended up sleeping in our tent most of the night instead of walking. If it had been any other event I think we would have gone home but it is important so we stayed. For me the highlight of the night is always the lighting of the luminaries. Throughout the night you can buy paper bags and decorate them in memory of those that didn’t make it. Philip as he has always done did one for his friend Connor. As night falls they line the track with them, weighed down and light candles in them.

We then do an almost silent walk around the track. The silence isn’t required but all the talking is in whispers as people stop at certain luminaries to pray and remember. My walk was weighted by thought of a little girl that I follow on CaringBridge that passed away days before the Relay. She was about Philip’s age and had been battling cancer for years. I know she is in heaven and there is no cancer there.

The rest of the week has been appointments. Nothing earth shattering just your normal everyday sort of appointments but they all hit this week and my schedule is a mess. So is the house. Next week should be much more sane.

Reading BabyCenter this week there was talk about kids being punished, expelled, and even arrested for bring anything shaped like a gun to school. When I was picking my daughter up from school there was a boy showing his friend the gun that he had made out of scrap wood and metal. He had obviously taken some time to get it right. It was clearly not real but it was obviously a gun. Listening in he had made it as a prop for a play. He wasn’t allowed to use it in the play. That was to be expected, we do have rules about not having toy guns on school property. The thing that struck me was that was as far as it went. He was not suspended or even had it taken away from him. Somebody made the judgement call that extreme measures were not needed. Hats off to them.

My Weekly Clean up task…

I call it my spice shelf but it has a lot more on it than that. Mostly it just needs to be organized but I am sure there are a few things that are not in their proper home or should be garbaged.

In our homeschool this week…

At the beginning of the week Philip was given the goal of moving his percent finished in Rosetta Stone from 75% to 85%. He managed to get to 83%. Given that we had some technical problems I chose to accept that. His reward was a field trip with Grandma that he really enjoyed.

The technical problem was that he is having trouble getting the speech recognition portion to work. We still have not solved that completely. It appears that part of the problem was with the newest version of flash, 11.7.700 seems to have problems with Rosetta Stone. Downgrading the flash made it work sort of again. I am left with a couple of possibilities.

1. The rather old laptop is doing something funny.
2. The headphones are faulty. We have gone through a number of them this year already.
3. Rosetta Stone is having problems. It is an online service so who know what goes on in the background.
4. That it is the last unit and it has just gotten harder.

I am going to set up an old computer with a clean install of windows and see if it works better there. If not I am not sure what we are going to do other than contact his teacher with our problems. The good news is that he is passed the ‘Minimum’ 80% and thus has passed the course. However if I do not resolve this problem I am reluctant to pay to continue the course next year.

I’m cooking…

This week cooking has been survival mode cooking. I did a big beef roast up on Sunday and that lasted for three meals. Beans and Wieners were in there somewhere. Ham steaks in brown sugar sauce was another. I will have to measure the ingredients for that one next time I make it and post the recipe. It is quite definitely not healthy but it is yummy.

I have been having fun joining recipe blog hops and viewing some of the recipes. One of those I am planning on making this week and have bought the ingredients for. It is a salad that comes with a history lesson. The recipe is Coronation Chicken and I will send you to the blog for the recipe and the history lesson.

My week’s recipe is a revisit on baking bread. I have long made my own bread for cost reason and that I know what goes in it. Over the years things have changed a little so I decided to redo the post with those changes.

I’m Praying for…

My kid’s Grandma worked in our church for many many years. One of the women that she worked with all those years just had her granddaughter diagnosed with AML, another childhood cancer. He granddaughter is a year older than Philip. So please pray for Savannah and her family. They are less than week in from diagnoses. This first bit is a whirlwind. It is tough to put into words the emotions and disbelief that occurs. It is the worst time from here you settle in to a new normal which again is tough to explain unless you have been through it.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share (silly, serious or both!)…

Ian (4y old) trying to confirm that the person we were talking about was our priest.

“That man that stands up in church and reads God’s papers”

The Homily is written out that our priest carries to the pulpit.

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