Spring 2013

Has it really been so long since I've blogged? Ah, I have fond memories of the days when this blog was a fun journal of our lives, detailing everything from family camping adventures to the mysteries of a Ladmo bag. I had fun following blogs too and miss hearing how all my friends are doing. But, time is a limited resource and regular blogging just isn't on the table anymore. Even when we're done homeschooling, my time will go to writing stories instead of blogging. ... Ah, doesn't THAT sound nice? :)

Well, for the sake of those of you who like to check in with the boys, here's another update.

They are doing just fantastic. They're still in counseling and we still go to grief group, but it's all really positive and they are doing so well. The holidays were really nice this year. They're enjoying all their activities. They're more settled and happy. I'm really proud of them.

Even though homeschooling has been completely exhausting and I literally felt like I was going to lose my mind a few times, it was worth it. It did what I needed it to do. Everyone's doing great. It was really fun to teach the boys this year. We did some fun projects and they're such smart little whips that they're easy to teach. What made it hard was the fact that it's just so time consuming. I cut back on the freelancing to make room for homeschooling, but I've had two book launches this year and the odd freelance deadline here and there. Not to mention the normal time it takes to run a household. It's been crazy at times.

But we're in the home stretch - four weeks and three days (who's counting?) - and they're all done with their standardized testing. Those are administered by the charter school for homeschoolers that we used this year, so I didn't have to worry about that. Anyway, all three boys did fantastic on their tests. That's a relief, cuz otherwise I would've worried that I screwed them up this year. :) 

John measuring his shadow. This was part of an Algebra lesson to determine the height of one of the trees in our backyard.

We traced a large outline map of Europe (this is about 3 feet tall) and colored in the countries as we studied them.

We read "Little Men" together this year. I was surprised how much they enjoyed such a simple, slow-paced, old-fashioned book. We made a "Plumfield House" box where we made notes about theme, setting, plot, vocabulary, etc. Then we made puppets for several of the characters with notes about each one. It was fun.

We stapled together several manila file folders to make a timeline of European history. We later added folders to show ancient Egyptian history so we could see how the two were related. Ben is in front of the section showing the Golden Age of Greece (blue line at the top) and part of the Roman Republic. From his knee to the edge of the picture on the right, this section goes from about 650 BC to about 70 BC.

This is how long the entire timeline is. It starts at 2880 BC and Egypt's Old Kingdom and goes to the present day. The Golden Age of Greece is not quite in the middle. It was fascinating to see how long the Egyptian Kingdoms and Roman Republic/Empires were around compared to Greece.

This goes from about 1170 AD to the present day and includes the last part of the middle ages (King John, Robin Hood, the Black Death), the Hundred Years War, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery (Christopher Columbus, Magellan), the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution (Newton, Galileo), etc. ......   My lifetime takes up the last two inches of this timeline. Take the length of the top of the sunny spot at the end of the timeline, double it, and that's my life. Crazy!

Let's see, Chris has had not one but TWO procedures to try to correct that extra electrical pathway in his heart. Usually one procedure is enough, but the pathway grows back and reconnects in about 10% of the cases. Chris was one of the lucky 10%. Woot! Ugh. They don't do this kind of procedure in Boise (or anywhere in Idaho) so Kevin and I took Chris down to the children's hospital in Salt Lake City while my mom stayed with the other two here at home.

Getting ready for the first surgery.

Chris rode this little trike all the way from pre-op to the operating room. He barely fit on this thing! He cracked up the doctor and the nurses. That's my silly Christopher!

The plus to driving all the way to SLC was getting to see Uncle Travis (and the second time, Aunt Chelsea as well). That was a treat for Chris (me too!) and I'm just now realizing I didn't get any pictures of them together. :/ I've been so lax about pictures lately. I need to repent of that! :)

Anyway, the second time Travis came he brought a Lego set for Christopher. Travis claimed some guy on the street was just giving these away and Travis took one because he thought maybe Chris would like it. LOL. That's Travis. Anyway, Chris LOVED it. He wanted to take it to the hospital with him so he could work on it in the recovery room. Well, the recovery after the first procedure was NOT fun. Poor kid was so sick. Kevin and I didn't think Chris would be up for Legos. We let him bring them in the car but drew the line at carrying them into the hospital. We had enough to carry around while waiting for him to come out of surgery. I told him if he felt like working on them we'd go down to the car and get them. He insisted he would ask for his Legos right when he got up.

Guess what?

Yep. Recovery the second time was so much better. They used a different anesthetic so he didn't get so sick. Yay! :)

Here's a couple of cute pics of Chris before the second surgery.

You know, going into the first surgery, we were all a little ignorant about the whole thing. Before the second one, we knew just what he was getting into. That little guy was so brave though. He went into it with such a good attitude. He tried to look at the positive. He only got really nervous right before he put them under, but that's understandable. He did great. Kevin and I were both so proud of him.

So we get to see the girls every week, and they stay the weekend with us every two weeks. They live about 25 minutes away and we drive through farm country to get to them. Here are some pics of the kind of views we get to enjoy.

Isn't that lovely?

My oldest step daughter, Kira, was in the back of the van taking pictures of the scenery and snapped this pic of Kevin and I on the sly. I love it. :)

Kira's pretty fond of taking pictures of us on the sly. Here's another one I really like:

Ben's big thing lately is the Rubik's Cube. He watched some YouTube videos to learn how to solve it and has been playing with it every day since then. It's been several weeks. He's had to oil it many times and the red stickers are all faded with so much use. I think his fastest time solving it is 1 minute 9 seconds.

John is on the waiting list for the technological high school I mentioned in my last post. He's in a very good position though and we're hopeful he'll get in before the school year begins. :) This year John has really gotten into cycling. He's lost a lot of weight and is really starting to look like a teenager now. He earned his cycling MB, which involves several long rides including a 50 mile ride. A few weeks ago he and a friend went on a four hour, 30-mile jaunt around town. They went to the greenbelt, downtown, all over. It's so nice to live in a place where my teenage son can have that kind of freedom. :)

Okay, I'm going to skim through my photos to see what I've missed and just post things at random.

At one of our favorite parks in town.

Chris getting his Wolf.

Grandma and Grandpa Cook coming to visit.

Chef Bear

Day of the Dead

Trunk or Treat

Ben getting his Arrow of Light (and Indian Brave face paint!)

The cousins at Travis' wedding

Love this pic of Kevin and John

So cute. Ben and Chris on the grounds of the SLC temple.

Oh, for those of you wondering how the publishing/writing is going, you can follow my blog here: http://donnacookauthor.com/

It's been a lot of work trying to write and do the marketing at the same time. I've had some signings recently that went really well, and one of my short stories won Honorable Mention in IDAHO Magazine's Fiction Contest. The short story was inspired by some shoes I saw at the chocolate shop downtown:

Yum!!

Okay, there's a loooong update for you. Until next time....

A Few Random Things

Parrots hanging out in our front yard:

John receiving two rank advancements in scouts. He's now working on his Star rank. Thank goodness for excellent scout leaders who've helped him get this done!

John had some tooth work done and came home with a pretty swollen cheek. He had some fun with this. Video will be forthcoming.

Final Post of the Year

I've recently switched from my old desktop (now residing in my closet) to my laptop. I forgot to switch over some pictures so it looks like some events will go blogless. I'm sure we'll all survive. ;)

Here are the pictures I have.

John is out of cub scouts and into boy scouts. This was his first Court of Honor:



I absolutely love John's scout leader. He does such a good job teaching those boys real scout skills and running the program the way it's supposed to be run. John has always been an enthusiastic and diligent scout and he's carrying that through to boy scouts. He's earned his Scout rank and is two requirements away from Tenderfoot. He went on his first Camporee in December and had a blast. And mom managed to not freak out too much about him being away from home. It helped me to know he was in good hands.


The next pictures were taken at my work. The company just renewed a 10-year lease at this location. Part of the deal was getting some renovations done. New carpeting, new tile, new paint, new wallpaper, new countertops and splitting the phone room into two so we could have a second multi-purpose room.

When did all this lovely work occur? On evenings and weekends? Oh no. During working hours. It was interesting to say the least. Most of the work was done in stages and the contractor was good about doing his best to work around rooms we needed due to studies going on or clients in town or whatever. For the most part, it wasn't as bad as I'd feared.

Then, the perfect storm.

The absolute worse day of renovations, in terms of chaos and disarray, was the day before we had a full house, in terms of studies and clients. This was carpeting day. It was NOT FUN.

Here's one of the two client lounges at 2:00 pm, which had to be ready to receive clients by mid-morning the next day:



Here's the other one:


Yes, that's a chair upside down. Don't ask me how these kinds of things happened. I'd rather not know.

This is the multi-purpose room, which also needed to be cleared out and set up by the next day.


This is the view from my office. See our desks in the hallway? Isn't that a lovely location for them? Beyond the hallway is the lobby. It also needed to be put together before clients arrived.



This is my office, in the process of being disassembled so the carpet layers could get to it. I hadn't yet moved out my computer.



Literally every room in our entire suite looked like this. Every hallway. Every kitchen (there are two, one of which we needed for clients the next day). Every everything. When I had to empty out my desk and clear out my shelves, it was hard to know where to put stuff. I found a blank spot of floor in the multi-purpose room.

In the middle of all this, with all three offices torn apart and dysfunctional, we were supposed to get ready for clients. You know, the normal work that has to be done prior to a study. Without working computers, that pretty much came to a halt.

By the time the movers started hauling out my desk it was time for me to go and I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

And here we get to delight in the joys of being an hourly worker who gets to walk out of the middle of all this. The two managers stayed late and arrived early the next day to put things back together, direct the moving crews and cleaning crews, etc. By the time I walked in the building the next morning, the place looked beautiful.

It was amazing.


In other December news, the boys had their Winter Sing at school.

Goof balls.

And Christmas. This year I hosted Christmas Eve at my house, which I haven't done in a long time. It was so much fun. Instead of my original centerpiece, I used the gingerbread houses we made.

The boys had a good Christmas, in terms of handling the changes this year. Ben struggled off and on in the week leading up to Christmas, but the actual holidays were really great. They got to spend time with me and Brian both, along with their two extended families, and they had a great time. I had a great time too. :)

So, that's the end of this year. It's been quite the year too. While it hasn't exactly been easy, in all honesty it has been much, much easier than last one was. The Lord has really been with me and my children through this whole thing and we have been greatly blessed. I know I've healed much quicker than I would have otherwise and I'm so grateful for that. I've been feeling really great for awhile now and I'm looking forward to a new year. We'll see what this one brings. :)

Happy October!

Here's the latest in the Cook household...

Last month John received his Arrow of Light award. It was very exciting!

I really would like a different camera. Pictures on this camera come out so dark sometimes!

It was cute to see him cross the bridge. He had to salute his boy scout leader, salute the flag and step off and do the scout handshake with his leader. He was so serious about it. It was like watching a military man. Too cute.

I love that our ward gives the boys these arrow plaques in honor of their acheivement. John really did work hard for this award and I'm proud of him for it. We hung it above his bed.

Speaking of John's bed, I'm working on plans to get this kid his own room. I have all three boys in one bedroom. When they were small this was... okay. Now that they're getting bigger, it's starting to get impossible. John is getting to that age where he needs some quiet place to retreat to, and his brothers don't always cooperate on that front.

I've been using the other bedroom as an office. The office is stuffed full of furniture: a huge desk, a small desk for the kids, three bookcases, my great-grandmother's small upright piano and my other great-grandmother's cedar chest.

It took a little creative thinking to figure out how to get John his own room, but this is what I came up with.

I figured out if I got a small desk to put where the fish tank used to be (in the living room), then switch to a laptop so I can get rid of the huge desk and my ancient, semi-functional desktop computer, we'd make room for a bed for John. My mother kindly agreed to store the piano and chest at her house. I'm combining my books onto the one tall bookcase, leaving one in the room for John to use, and moving the third into what will be Ben and Chris' room for them to use. John has agreed to share some of the space in his room. The tall bookcase with my books will stay in John's room cuz there's really no where else for that to go. I'll put a small filing cabinet on the floor of his closet as well. Other than that, he'll be all set.

Because this plan requires funding, John agreed to having his own room be his Christmas gift this year. This took zero persuasion on my part. John is VERY excited about getting his own room.

So, stage one began last weekend.

I bought an inexpensive but (I think) pretty writing desk from WalMart, which I picked up after Brian got the kids on Friday. I didn't say anything to the kids about this, wanting to surprise them. I figured I'd put the desk together Friday night since we had conference all weekend (loved it!) and I had plans Saturday night.

Here's the before picture:

Here's after:

Let me be more specific. This is 37 parts, 93 screws, 52 nails and 6 hours later. You wouldn't think a desk like this could possibly have 37 parts, but it did.



My hands were pretty sore from tightening all those screws but still, I did it all by myself and it felt GREAT!

When the boys got home Sunday night they were so excited. Totally worth all the effort.

Other updates:

Christopher had his follow-up appointment with a new cardiologist who I really love. He's doing just fine, no more episodes. The plan is to keep him on the medication until he's a teenager and then do that relatively minor procedure to correct the problem. There's really no way to know for sure if he's outgrown it other than to take him off the medication and wait and see. I've never felt comfortable with that plan and this new doctor thinks it's risky too. The idea of his heart stopping one day just does not give me joy. Call me weird. Anyway, Brian and I both feel good about this new plan, so barring any new developments that's what it will be.

For those of you who are interested, I wrote a semi-personal post for the America Jane blog stating my intentions for the future of that blog. I really had to think about where that blog fits into the life of a single mother.

In general, we're doing fine over here. It's been six months since Brian and I separated and 2 1/2 since the divorce was final. Brian and I are very amicable and working well together to raise our children, for which I am grateful. They say it takes at least a year to recover from a divorce and I believe it. But the six month mark felt like a good milestone for me. While there's still healing and adjusting to do, I think the worst is behind me. John as well. Ben and Chris, being younger, are experiencing things differently. I think the reality of it all finally hit them last month. But all three of the kids are doing a good job talking about their feelings, which really helps. I'm proud of them.

Again, I just have to express my gratitude for the outpouring of support I've received from so many people. Your words of encouragement and comfort mean a lot to me. More than anything I have felt sustained by the Lord and I know I am in His hands. All in all, that's not a bad place to be.