More Cleaning Up

Our home has three living areas: John's office, the living room and the family room. When we moved we assumed that we wouldn't be able to find a place with three living areas so we would probably only have John's office and a family room. So, we gave Tasha and David our living room furniture. Little did we know we would be back and lacking furniture in the living room.
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Please don't judge me by this mess! I am still unpacking.
My desk is in this area as well. They say that a cluttered desk is the sign of a creative person.

John took me shopping over the weekend and we purchased some furniture for the living room. John actually let me get my favorite color without a fight!
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We have a lot of little collections in our shelving from some of our travels. The areas represented are: Hawaii, Korea, Grand Canyon area, Texas, Germany, Natural History Museum in DC, Guatemala and Egypt. Quite a hodge podge of things and I hope to add to it. I love to travel.


Notice my desk area, it closes and hides everything. I love it!

No end tables or coffee table. I look forward to finding something to refurbish.

Tomorrow we are heading to Ft Bragg. My son in law is coming home after serving a year in Afghanistan. It will be a late night, he is supposed to come in at 10ish pm. However, I know the military and how that can change. We are going to go during the day and spend some time with Tasha. Then we will welcome David home, take pictures for Tasha and then head home ourselves.

Interview

Months ago I applied to the University of South Carolina. I am interested in their Master in Special Education program for first time teacher licensing. I applied at the last minute so I guess it is appropriate that I am interviewing at the last minute.

I had never been on the USC campus, it seems pretty nice what little I saw of it. I was mainly interested in finding the education building.

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This is a big step in my life. If I commit my time and money to this program then I need to be serious about finishing it. I am concerned about the time required for the classes. Class periods are at a bad time, 4:30 to 8:30, not good mommy times to be in class. I mentioned this during the interview. One of the interviewers, who would be my adviser, wrote up a schedule for me for the first semester that included online courses. I guess that was an indication of the interview.....that she was advising me.

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The interview went well. I meet all the criteria with my GPA and Millers Analogy test score. She said that my test score was good, I thought it was merely passing since I was so sick when taking that test.

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We talked for quite a while about other subjects because one of the interviewers had adopted two children from Russia (was Russia when she adopted). We talked about behavior, attachment issues and such.

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After the interview I had one hour to read two articles and write a summary and critique them. I did fine on the first article. I did struggle because it was an outdated article about inclusion and I know the outcome of the IDEA legislation. The second article I struggled with more because I couldn't critique it too well. I wrote one paragraph critiquing the article and then the rest of the paragraphs were my opinions on why the author was wrong! Oh well, they got a sample of my writing (and some of my opinions). I find it sad that at this level of education they need to see if you can read, comprehend and write.

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I did come out and tell them that I didn't realize that I was so opinionated. They said that it was allowed.

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Overall, a good day. I should know soon if I will be accepted. My next concern is financing....how am I going to afford this? School starts next month.

I returned to my car to find that I had two minutes left on my meter, what timing.

The Projects Never End

We decided it was time to set up the work shop. We had tools everywhere and couldn't find anything.
After hours of organizing we have a shop looking pretty good. Maybe I will be able to find the tools necessary to get started on the playhouse.

My next project is the pictures up our stairwell. We always have had pictures there when we lived here before, but need to add the new kids to the collection. I have spent hours going through pictures and need to get some prints made and new frames.

I can already see that I will have a problem. Either the wall isn't big enough or we have too many kids, or maybe just too many pictures.

Can I take the pictures all the way to the ceiling?

Small Town Festivities

We went to church for fireworks tonight. It was nice. Small crowd and fantastic weather. We brought our chairs and bug spray so we were comfortable.

Our four youngest came along. Tasha, do you recognize that dress on Larissa? It was Tasha's dress when she was younger, she will be 21 in November. Funny thing is, I bought it used at a Goodwill. I looked for a picture of Tasha wearing it but couldn't find one. That is not surprising since all my pictures are sitting in boxes waiting for me to organize them.

Joselin has been moping for two days. She has problems talking to anyone about her feelings so I literally had to nag her to get her to talk to me. She did finally open up and talk and seems to be in a better mood.

Overall, great food and great company (family). I hope that everyone else had a great day today.

I Keep Him Busy

I tackled the job of replacing the lights along the front sidewalk. Look like fun?

I asked John to put up a flag for me. Sounds simple but nothing is simple around here.

Putting the flag on the tree was not too difficult. However, to properly display the flag you must light it at night. We used to have a line run up front until John accidentally cut it while cleaning up the islands.

I came up with a way to prevent cut lines....using an irrigation pipe.

John did the grunt work and I did the wiring.

Both jobs were successful.

We celebrated at the movie theaters. John took the little ones to see Toy Story 3 and I took to the girls to see Eclipse.

Tomorrow will be a relaxing day. We plan on attending a picnic at the church followed by fireworks. We should all come home with many mosquito bites, they are terrible this year.

Epilepsy Confirmation

We saw the pediatric neurologist today. I brought the CD with her taped EEG and naturally the doctors office did not fax over the notes. I thought that was odd because they would not make the referral without the notes from the last neurologist. Then they didn't forward them to the new neurologist. A call cleared that up.


After reviewing the CD and notes the neurologist concurs with the last neurologist. Larissa has atypical seizures coming from her frontal lobe, nocturnal epilepsy. He said that the type of seizures that she has are hard to control with meds.

Another concern is that she doesn't run properly. Her gait is off. He asked me if she had ever walked on her toes....she hasn't.

When Larissa came to our home her head was cocked to the side, her right arm was in a strange angle with her fist always closed, and she had swallowing issues. They thought that this was from laying in one position all the time and not being held. It is amazing what damage neglect can do to a baby.

However, a later doctor thought that she had a stroke at some point. An MRI was never done but she did have a lot of interventions that helped immensely. The neurologist now wants an MRI done.

So, I got one appointment out of the way and now have three new ones.....blood work, MRI and another neurology appointment plus I have to get a copy of the sleep study that she had done a few years ago.

Keeping Busy

Tonight was the last day of VBS. The kids were able to get little horse rides which they enjoyed.

John is walking behind one of the horse handlers in this picture. He took tomorrow off of work and made it home in time for the festivities.

It is nice to have my husband home for a 4 day weekend. We do OK with this schedule for the time being. However, I worry about how long we will have to live this way. I really don't see the economy picking up greatly in the near future. The housing market here is not on any type of rebound at all. The job market is even worse so I doubt he will get a job close to home anytime soon. So, we will continue to persevere.

Tomorrow we will be taking Larissa to see the pediatric neurologist. As soon as I received the CD with her EEG that was done in May I called to make an appointment. I was given a date in mid-August. I wasn't too pleased with waiting that long and told her that. She asked my why and I told her that she was still seizing. She asked me how often and I told her every day.

So she said she would put us on the "call if there is a cancellation" list. I thought I would never hear from them. However, the next day they called with a mid-July appointment which I accepted.

Yesterday they called with another cancellation for Friday. I jumped on that appointment. So, tomorrow we will head to town and see what this neurologists opinion is.

Larissa is still having the seizures in her sleep. I have put her in my bed the last several nights so I could monitor her better. Naturally, this means lack of sleep for me because she is a huge bed hog and sometimes her seizures will wake me up (which is why she is there). She has several of them a night. However, they are shorter in duration and seem weaker somehow then before she started on her meds.

Slowly, I am getting things done on my to do list. However, the list seems to grow of its own free will.