A Month? Really?

Nearly a month has gone by since I've written here. It doesn't seem like that long, but when I consider how much has happened in that period of time, I suppose it has to be a month! lol!

One of our biggest changes is that Adrian has started school again. He applied through Second Chance at the beginning of the summer, had to do a mound of research and paperwork and was down to waiting for approval on his retraining application at the beginning of September. He went to the orientation seminar at the school he is attending the week before classes started, though at that time he still hadn't heard anything about his application. He was told they were very backlogged trying to get through the hundreds of applications and that he should have a phone call by the Friday afternoon before his classes start. Friday came and went. Adrian was so disappointed. I was wondering what God was up to. I mean, I really felt his leading all the way through this process, right from last spring and through the summer. Each time I had a question about how things were progressing, God had the answer. I told Adrian we'd just have to wait until Monday morning to see how things go. His class wasn't to start until the evening so there was still time for a phone call to come during the day.

Adrian and Nicholas headed to church Sunday morning. I stayed home...Matthew had hives (we still don't know exactly from what but they lasted three days!) and Andrew's allergies were so bad I wasn't positive it wasn't a cold. At lunchtime, the two boys and I prayed for Adrian's phone call to come first thing Monday morning. Andrew then said to me that maybe the call would come that very afternoon. I chuckled and told him not likely since government offices don't typically work weekends. Well, imagine my shock when half an hour later I answered the phone and it was THE CALL!!! That was definitely from God! Adrian started his classes last week on Monday and has been studying hard ever since.

This past week and a bit has been an adjustment for us all. Adrian's first block of classes are held in the evenings and he doesn't get home until late. It's been weird for him not to sit with us at dinner (though he does for lunch still) and for me to not have anyone to talk to other than Panda after the kids have gone to bed. Oh, that's another thing...I can't seem to get them in bed at a decent hour! lol! We talk too much! We head up at the regular time, but then we get into lengthy discussions or I've read much longer than usual to them.

I have not yet been able to fall asleep before Adrian's home and I'm getting up before him most mornings to let Panda out. Adrian's having a more difficult adjustment, I think. He's typically an early riser so these late nights have thrown his system out a bit. He's trying to sleep in and he's successful about half the time. He's very tired, but wired, when he gets home and is not able to get to sleep until the wee hours of the morning. I'm sure his body will adjust. It'll probably be just about the time that they switch the block of classes to a different time slot!

Schooling for the boys is going well so far. We're using All About Spelling this year and so far they are enjoying it. Even Matthew when he's not in a grumpy mood. I started all three of them at Level One as recommended and there were a few things that Andrew and Nicholas needed correction on for sounds of letters, especially vowels, and on segmenting words into the individual letter sounds. Funnily enough, Matthew did better on that section than they did. He just got it faster. The point we are at now with the lessons is that I spend much less time with the older boys than with Matthew. They are approaching the lessons with a bit of humour...knowing it will only take a few minutes, literally.

I'm spending more time with Matthew for two reasons. The first is that there are some things that they have learned before and he hasn't so it's not really review for him. The second reason is that he has a stubborn streak in him and has been a bit moody. The stubborn streak is nothing new. I suppose moodiness isn't either, but he seems to be more affected by changes than the others are. He's had a lot on his plate recently: Adrian being home all summer and now going to school, Tae Kwon Do has started again so he is getting a real workout three times a week on top of being extremely active on his own, he's been getting to sleep later and not always sleeping in the next morning so he's tired, he had hives for several days and was uncomfortably itchy, and finally, he just spent five nights sleeping in Andrew's room because of a spider problem in his own room. It's obviously too much for an eight-year-old to handle! I'm having trouble handling the same things and I'm a lot older than eight!!!

The spider issue. I've been taking a theatre class in a nearby town once a week. Adrian's Mum came last week to watch the boys while I was out and told me when I got home that there had been dozens and dozens of tiny spiders crawling on Matthew's bedroom ceiling. Eeeewww!!!! She had cleaned them off the ceiling but Matthew was asleep in my bed. I don't blame him...I wouldn't want to sleep in there either. I checked after K left and cleared another two dozen or so spiders off the ceiling and some off the curtains. Then I went and had a shower. Extreme heebie-jeebies! I showed Adrian when he got home and there were more again. He stopped counting the spiders, closed the door and promised to deal with it in the morning. Not my favourite way to deal with it, but we used spider spray, left the door closed and all the windows in the house open. Of course, it was cold that day - we were freezing by lunchtime!

It has taken until today for us to get everything cleaned and put back in the room. All the clothing and curtains and bedding had to be washed. Everything. I lost count of how many loads of laundry we did. All the clothes ended up on the dining room table. I quickly decided Matthew has way too many clothes, since the table was piled high! We have very generous friends who send us clothing for the boys and Matthew being the smallest ends up with a load of hand-me-downs from everyone. Today we managed to get through most of his clothing and have a huge pile to send to his cousin, a smaller pile of clothes that are only fit for the bin and some that will still be put aside for Matthew to grow into. We just have pants left to do, which is tomorrow's job.

We vacuumed, cleaned walls and doors and the closet and windows plus all the furniture. I forgot about the ceiling fan so I'll get to that tomorrow, too. Matthew also took this opportunity (okay, he was, ahem, encouraged by me to go through the books on his shelves and decide which ones he can part with to send to his cousins. His shelves are nearly empty now! The toys are in the basement at the moment, but he's got plans to go through them and be choosey about what gets to come back into his room.

Andrew and Nicholas are now under orders to go through their bookshelves tomorrow and start doing a thorough cleaning through their rooms. I'm not going to empty their rooms to do this, I'm just asking them to make sure they clean behind and under things and declutter a bit while they are doing so. Their rooms aren't that bad. They are pretty good about keeping the clutter mostly out of the way!

My next huge project really is going to have to be the craft room. I did make a start on it in the summer, but it's gone back to being the dumping ground for all the things that don't have a home elsewhere in the house. I think I'm going to have to be ruthless this time. I want that space back!

Well, Adrian should be home any time now and then I'll head to bed.

I did it!!!

This morning I did my final run in the Couch to 5K program! Thirty minutes of running non-stop, plus five minutes warm up and a few minutes cool down. It's taken me a total of 20 weeks to complete this 9 week program (eek!), but I kept at it. My total distance each workout is still just over a kilometre short of the 5K goal, but that's no big deal. My next goal is to increase my speed so that I can reach that 5K mark within my total workout time (about 38-40 minutes in total, including walking times at beginning and end).

I know that I have not done this on my own strength. I have used my workouts as times for reflection and prayer (okay, and I've put a movie on occasionally to help pass the time so I wasn't focusing so much on the clock) and God has given me the strength to do this through some very difficult times! I wanted to give up so many times!

"I can do everything through him who gives me strength."
Philippians 4:13

So much to write about...so little time! I have blog posts backing up for two weeks so I figure I'd better get some of them posted before much longer! I've been keeping busy with various projects including gardening, decluttering around the house, working in the abominable craft room, getting Day Camp forms out and receiving the applications back, and just life in general.

We've been going through a lot of stuff as a family and I'm really heavily relying on God. Each day I see evidence of his work in my life and the lives of my family members and I'm so thankful! Things are looking up!

Blessed by Books

Have you ever had anyone be an answer to prayer? A friend from church sent home a bag of books for the kids several weeks ago. She'd been clearing them out of her kids' bookshelves and thought our boys would enjoy them. I gave them the bag and they happily dug in. They never emptied the bag though, having immediately found books they wanted to read and it was put aside in the kitchen.

One Sunday morning, a week or two after receiving the bag of books, on the way to church I was thinking about Andrew's and Nicholas' wardrobe. After recently going through their clothing and seeing what didn't fit any more or what was worn out I realised they were in need of some clothing items, mainly pajamas and nice button up shirts. We don't have a lot of extra cash at the moment for clothing, and usually it happens that a friend will send a bag or two of clothes for the kids and that gets us by without having to spend a fortune on clothes anyway. Nobody had sent us any clothing in months and months though so I prayed that someone would be clearing out closets soon and think of us.

That morning, at church, I saw my friend, J, who sent us the bag of books and thanked her for them. I told her how much the boys had enjoyed the new reading material. She then asked me if the shirts fit. Hmmm? It turns out that at the bottom of this large cloth bag of books were several shirts, shorts and pajamas. We'd just not got around to emptying the bag out and didn't know there was clothing at the bottom!

When I got home I found the bag and emptied it. What a surprise to see what was there! God knew what we needed and put this in my hands even before I prayed about it. I just didn't know about it until afterward! God is so good!!!

Last Sunday, J blessed us with two more boxes of books. The kids are absolutely thrilled! There are novels and series of books and there are even a load of pop-up books. These pop-ups are not for toddlers and young children though. Many of them are science books about space, birds, dinosaurs, insects or the Olympics or motorcycles, with detailed descriptions and tidbits of information written throughout. They are gorgeous!!! We've all been enjoying reading through these books. What a treasure to have!