So, I posted back in August that we were trying to sell our house and it had been two months and things were still in storage and I was getting discouraged. Well, it took about four more months before we were able to move - at the beginning of December! It was super freezing weather the weekend we moved and we didn't have near as much help doing so as we would have liked but we managed to get all of the stuff out of the old house into the new one in a relatively timely manner.
But. We were so sick of all of the work it took to get moved that we balked at the idea of getting our stuff out of storage - and Christmas was coming. So, we continued living with just the bare necessities and planned Christmas and all of the stuff that comes with the holidays. We did fish a few things out of the storage units but it took a lot of digging and we didn't want to damage stuff.
When Christmas was finally over and we were ready to really work on bringing stuff home, it snowed. And snowed. And snowed. Our "driveway" (for lack of a better word) is very long and we didn't have a way to plow it and my twelve-passenger van is great for hauling things (like kids) but it's not great in snow. So we were snowed in for days at a time; until we could get it shoveled. Finally we took to parking in the church parking lot across the street. Unfortunately, the trailer we use to haul things (like furniture and moving boxes) was snowed in pretty much all of January.
At the end of January one day, we were all out shoveling the driveway (it takes all of us 2-3 hours to do) and I decided I needed pictures of the kids all out there working hard. I was looking at my tablet instead of where I was walking, slipped on the ice and landed firmly (that's an understatement!) on my tailbone. 99% sure I broke it.
In spite of my injury, we managed to empty one of the storage units and unpack all of the boxes, including the school books! But since I had planned the school year so long ago, many of my plans needed to be updated and/or changed. We also had to find room in the new house for schooling, since we will ultimately be having school in the as-yet unfinished basement when it is finished.
And we got colds. Not a big deal, right? Wait a few days and people will be feeling better and we will be back in business. Nope. I was sick for at least a month. It was all I could do to get the absolute necessities done, so school was put on a back burner - again.
A week or so after I finally got over this monster cold (it was probably flu in hindsight), and I was starting to feel normal again from the broken tailbone, I fell in the kitchen and sprained my knee! So now I was on crutches for about a week, and not able to stand or walk for more than a few minutes at a time for a couple more weeks.
Knee feeling better, I scheduled some dental work that I had been putting off for a couple of years and had three molars pulled. Four days later, before I was done healing from that, I got another cold. This one wasn't nearly as bad as the previous, but with the sore jaw, and the fact that this cold decided to settle in my sinuses, it's been a rough week. Add in all of the other stuff and 2017 has been a rough year!
I guess the point of all of the information above is that we got zero formal schoolwork done since I last posted that I was going to try really hard to do something. But we still learned a lot:
~ We learned how to clean the entire house really quickly when someone was coming for a showing. (And that keeping it clean is easier than cleaning when it gets bad - although it takes a lot more self-discipline.)
~ We learned what stuff we really need in our house and what we can live without. (Now to actually get rid of the latter.)
~ We worked hard as a family to pack, fill the storage units with boxes and furniture, load and unload the Uhaul, deep clean after moving out of the old house, and empty one of the storage units. The lessons we learn from hard work as a family are invaluable.
~ I learned a lot about tailbone and knee injuries when I was trying to decide whether to go to the doctor for each of them. And I shared what I learned with the older kids.
~ The kids learned some major life skills when they had to, not only help take care of me for a few days at a time, but also to take over some of my responsibilities.
~ I have been really terrible about working with Josie on math for several years, so, at age ten, she still had only had a couple of formal math lessons. (About which I have felt guilty to no end.) She decided a couple of months ago that she wanted to do Teaching Textbooks but I didn't think she was ready. Teaching Textbooks starts at about a third grade level and I knew she couldn't possibly start with third grade math when she hadn't done any formal math so far. She insisted on trying so I reluctantly printed out the placement test and, with a warning that there would be things on there that she didn't know and not to get discouraged about it, gave it to her. She sat down at the desk with it and worked for about 20 minutes
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Update 8/27/2017: I stopped typing right there because it was time to get ready for my weekly date night with my hubby. I never got back to it because, on our way out the door, I slipped on the kitchen floor and broke both bones in my lower leg. Chaos ensued and by the time I got home from the hospital 4 days later, having gone through 2 surgeries and a lot of pain-killers, I had completely forgotten the unfinished blog post.
I don't remember what else I was going to add to the post but I figure I should at least finish Josie's story...
When she was done with the test, she gave it back to me and requested that I check her work immediately. To my surprise, she passed! There were only two concepts on the test she didn't know, and I was able to quickly explain them.
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