Well here goes. I just have lots on my mind and thought if I took a few minutes to type it all out in my journal of life I keep here. I thought maybe it would all start to make sense to me and come together. Or at least my compulsion to journal about life would have been met.

My first thought is my little one is reading so well it blows me away when my son reads words like responsibility. It just makes my heart beam. I found that I was tending to jump the gun when we were reading and not allowing him to fully try to get the word before I would “help”. So now our 15 minute reading time after school every day is done on Mom & Dad’s bed. I lay on the bed backwards with my feet resting on the head board (elevated because my feet are forever swollen, sore, hurting. More on that later) anyways. I lay there and he sits at about my waste next to me facing me and reading. This way I can’t see the words and he is reading to me. If he has a problem he spells the word out and I pronounce it for him and explain why in the word scent the c doesn’t make a sound. If you have ever needed to explain why the English language is as it is watch a pbs show called The Electric Company. They have fantastic rhymes about letters and why there is a hard g and a soft g. Just fantastic. I listen to it while I cook dinner and the kiddo jams to the songs which are very upbeat and happy. He has told me that in school he can explain what a sound sounds like to his classmates with his little rhymes. I am so proud of him. Yesterday we read Dogzilla and we have been discussing how when we choose a big book and I read one page and he reads the next I can make voices. How do I know when the people are talking and it is just description. So now that he is getting the idea of quotes our book reading time is quite comical. One of the main characters in the book had a British accent last night. (My mother would be oh so proud. Having been born in Liverpool) And we giggled and laughed. Dad made it in to listen with us on the bed. My hubby was giving me dreamy eyes. Oh pitter patter goes the heart. But we were listening and laughing ito the British “gentlemice” in the book.  I would recommend Electric Company to anyone with reading age kids. You can also listen to it on line at pbskids.org. As my son says, They have cool BEATBOX. (wow I am old if Beatbox is cool again.)

Next… am I old? Why is that I can trip and rip the whole bottom of my toe off and limp for a week and now because of the limping my ankle is so swollen it just pulses. Really annoying and ridiculous. And just frustrating!!! Luckily I have skin growing back, but the puffiness in the ankle is a killer.  “cankles” as a friend of mine called hers when she was pregnant. (And no Mom if you are reading this, I am not pregnant!) Just some weird mutated gene in our family where our ankles are large anyways. So much so that I could sit out P.E. in high school by just wearing flip flops and showing the teacher my ankles were “swollen” and I couldn’t run. Really WHO WHO wants to run a mile in 110 degrees. Not I. I would like to think I was creatively ingenious in my efforts to not kill myself prematurely with the 110 degree weather and running a mile outside. I think they called it “the scenic” hard to see when you have sweat in your eyes.

New adventures. There are lots of changes going on in my family. My sister is having a baby, my brother is moving to Colorado with his family, I have a cousins son who is 6 like my son and is suffering through surgeries and chemo as they battle to defeat brain cancer and the list goes on, my Dad is heavily  considering his plans after retirement, my hubbies family is working on a mini family reunion, I am trying to find a home for my son’s first horse that will take care of her in her aging years… I reflect on it and think. Yep this is life. Everything is always changing. Which is good. Many complain and commiserate about everything that is happening, but really how boring would it be if every day we were robots? I don’t know. For me very boring. I do wish not as many were hurting. I seem to have many friends who have lost someone close to them or are feeling lost because of life. At times it just seems to spin off its axis. I am ready for a little regular tilt for a while, but am glad we aren’t robots. I guess this is the time in my life when I have to assume God will take over and provide. A few of my friends probably feel I have blind faith. Yes sometimes when life is bumpy I just need to have blind faith in God. Tomorrow always comes. The sun rises and until it doesn’t I will have some blind faith.

One of our added duties as of late is my hubbies horse. Usually our horses live the life of relaxation and then riding and working and then relax and then ride and work. Recently my husbands horse has been very sick. She has an infection from bacteria. We are fighting it with everything we have. However, it is nasty and icky. My husband gets up early to doctor her. I check on her all day as my studio looks out over her pen and my heart breaks whenever I see her limping along. We doctor some mid day and the late at night after dark wash her off and cool her body down with water.  This routine has tired us both out quite a bit. Part of it is worry. Part of it is worry + doctoring her. I just pray that she makes it through without any residual effects.  Blind Faith again. Faith that we are doing everything we can to move forward.

Getting ready for school with this routine has been difficult. My kiddo wants to help us and be with us so invariably he ends up in bed a little late some nights. My little one has my temperament in the morning. Just hard to wake up and greet the day without shaking your head like a wet dog to get the sleep out of your eyes and the blood flowing. So the other morning I said to him I would be very “irritated” if he made us late for school when all he had to do was get up. This perked him up… he looked at me and said “wouldn’t you mean annnnoyed” and he gave me this little twerp grin. And then his eyes got big because I was a coming with my “tickle hands” threw him down on the floor and tickled him right there on the spot. This was a really good way to wake him up as he was giggling and giggling. And on we went with our day.

I think that is enough rambling for today.  I hope I haven’t bored you. For those more interested in cutter files. Today is the day I am working on cutter files woohoo!! And I am still running a sale in the store for 35% off all my files. (except the membership and the rhinestone patterns) I hope to have some up in the membership by the end of the week.

Have a wonderful wonderful day!

Enjoy!

Chris