Our Family Chronicle

This was a good message for me today as I have spent time in the emergency room and been through  another operation this last week.   This is the second time I have been through this procedure and it is difficult to understand why.   So I kept asking the Doctors, “What am I doing to cause this?” “What am I doing wrong?”  They kept trying to reassure me that it is nothing that I am doing!  I am looking for a cause so that I can avoid this pain in the future. But I keep looking for fault in myself.   Something I must be doing wrong.  Joel talked about how we have a tendency to find fault in our selves instead of looking at what we do right.  It is so true that I can do 1,000 things right and one thing wrong and I will concentrate on that one thing I did wrong.  I appreciate being reminded to remember the things I do right. As for this pain in my butt -  (the latest operation) – Pattie is helping to make sure it heals properly so that we won’t have to go through this again (fingers crossed).   As for the operation I will get to that on another post.

Back to Joel – We are all Gods Masterpiece and we need not look for validation from others.   When we look for others to to tell us what a great job we are doing we end up living on a roller coaster.   We are in a great mood when someone is telling us how great we are and in a terrible mood when we don’t hear how great we are.  Must be secure in who God made me to be with out the constant need of outside approval.  The lesson of the day from Joel.

Tags: Joel Osteen (weekly), Religion, health or lack of by Randall
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I have wondered over the years what it would be like to be in the emergency room late at night at Denver General (new name is Denver Health).  What kind of people?  How safe?  Well, Thursday night Randy and I found out.  It was not clean.  It was uncomfortable.  It took forever.  Randy had an abscess on his butt which made life uncomfortable to say the least.  The staff was friendly.  It just really took forever.  We stayed in e.r. until they finally decided that they would have to surgically drain the abscess.  We had to talk over and over again about the fact that Randy has no colon.  I would have thought that the doctors would have run into that before.  They kept trying to treat Randy like he had a colon.  Sleeping the first night in e.r. was impossible.  It was loud and uncomfortable.  We were in a closet.  No – not really but it was cinder brick walls (white) a chair and a gurney.  I used Randy’s coat as a pillow.  The next morning the young surgeon comes in to see Randy and the first words out of his mouth are “did she really sleep like that.”  Randy told him that if you are tired enough you can sleep anywhere.  That is the truth – although I think I only slept for an hour.  By the way, I don’t function well on an hour sleep.  Our family has been very supportive.  Phyllis was kind enough to sleep at our house while we were at the hospital Thursday night.  She took the kids to school on Friday and picked them up.  I called my mom who wished us well.  Pat & Judy were kind enough to drop everything and bring me lunch on Friday.  I was so out of it.  My wonderful niece Amy was great too.  She helped me fill out insurance paperwork and drove me back and forth more times than I can count.  Teresa got into my home Friday to get a hold of clients and cancel appointments allowing me the ability to stay longer at the hospital.  Everyone really helped a lot and we really appreciate it.  “Thank you all so very much.”

I’ll finish the rest of the story tomorrow – kind of tired and looking forward to sleep in my own bed:)

Tags: health or lack of by Panayota
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This is an interesting world.   The kids had a practice lock down at the school today.   They told me it was boring because they just sat there and could not talk.  I asked if they could do school work.  They both said they could do some work as long as they did not move or make noise.  I think I will have a practice lock down at home every night!!!!!!!   I do wonder though what the goal was in a practice lock down.   If the goal is to be still and quiet I would like to think thats what they do most of the time while in class.

Tags: Public education RANT by Randall
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Our children actually do get to play once in a while even though they don’t think so. Pattie told me that I should mention that tonight.   The kids are frequently telling us we don’t do anything with them so Pattie wanted this posted here - That way we could show them latter in life that they were not with out fun in their life’s.  It also helps cut down on parent guilt.  We do talk a lot about school work and about cleaning up the house and choirs so we need to take a minuet to talk about last Sunday.   We took the kids to the park and played a little basket ball.  None of us are any good but it was very fun. 

And yes Alex won.

On a side note, a couple of weeks ago I asked Melinda if she wanted to play a little soccer ball with me and she told me only if her friend Ashley couldn’t play.   I saw an opportunity to give her a rough time so I took it.  I said:  GEE Melinda I thought you told me that I don’t do enough with you and now you’re making me your back up, your last resort if you can’t find anything else to do.   It was kind of   fun to turn it around on her.  She looked back at me shook her head and rolled her eyes as she gave in and said: fine I want to play with you dad if it means that much to you.  She is kind of smart-alecky – she gets that from her mom!!!!!!   I laughed and told her she didn’t really have to play with me but she assured me that she wanted to.  And we had a good time kicking the ball back and fourth until dinner.

Tags: family activities, parent guilt, parenting by Randall
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Do I feel like a sucker?  Yes. 

I decided to reward Alex and give Melinda something to do so I picked Alex up from “extended day” and we went swimming.  On the way from school to the swimming pool I began the parent quizzing.  How was extended day?  Alex replied, “not helpful and my sort of friend “Ty” tried to get out of doing anything by going to the bathroom and playing his computer game.”  Not what I wanted to hear – plus who cares about “Ty”.  I’m sure his parents do but as usual not a direct answer to my direct question.  I then asked, “What did you do.”  He said that he did finish one page of math.  Good – I thought.  I asked, “Well, then what else did you do.”  He replied with, “I tried to find the words in the dictionary to write the definitions down but….”  I then ask (hoping the answer would be he has no homework left - but no) if his homework was done – “no” - was the response.  “Well – Mom – I still have two more pages in math and a paragraph to write.”  (“just shoot me”) 

When was he going to have time to do this?  I had promised him, Melinda and a friend that we would swim for an hour.  It is now 4:30 pm and we are not at the swimming pool yet.  We get into the pool around 4:40 pm (fast I know).  We stay until almost 6 pm and we still need to eat dinner.  A quick trip to the $5 pizza place and we are home.  Alex needs to eat but he needs to do the rest of his homework. 

The TV goes on.  The family begins watching a show.  Alex tries to do a bit of homework while the TV is on.  Not successful – imagine that.  So, another late night to bed (not in bed by 8 pm makes it bad news for the morning).  I fix his lunch.  He and Randy try to figure out the math and finally give up.  There are two pages worth of word problem math problems.  It is painstaking.  So – the school has won and Alex will go in a lower math class.  Has this fixed any problems?  Well – going to write an e-mail to the teacher he spent the “extended day” with and ask her why I put myself through this mess.  Alex can sit at my home and get homework done with Randy and I riding his butt – I don’t need no stinking extended day program where they have him sit for an hour doing what????

I’ll let you know her response to the “extended day”.  Amazing how the faith in the school goes up and down all in one day:(

Tags: Alex, Public education RANT, Uncategorized, parenting by Panayota
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