sing like wildflowers

This picture was taken in San Diego on June 2nd, which, unbeknownst to me, started a harrowing 2 months of stress, sickness, and a hectic scehdule. I wouldn’t have minded a mundane beginning to summer.

Even in San Diego, we started Elliot’s accelerated summer course in World History.  Both of us were panting from playing during the day and studying about 4 hours each evening. At the time, we had no idea the workbooks would consume us like this for the next 6 weeks. 10 workbooks in total. Weekly review meetings with teacher. I soon became the drill sergeant and challenged Elliot to write notes for each chapter. That process allowed him to give quick updates to his teacher instead of figuring out on the spot what to discuss. Guess what his rman mama made him do? Handwrite the notes for better comprehension. (Can’t remember how many times he dropped his pen or sipped each particle of water, ever so slowly while whining.)

From June to July, both parents had masssive health issues to address: dad had glacuoma surgery for both eyes, mom was admitted to the hospital 3 times and had 2 cath surgeries for blocked arteries. They were heavily calcified and one of her arteries is only half way ballooned. It was too dangerous and risky to proceed further. Another procedure is scheduled for pelvic mass removal in late August. My brother in law had a kidney transplant in late June.

I got shingles in July.

Teddy, our bun bun, was getting treated for a parasite that gave him glaucoma, for 28 days with deworming medicine.

It was overwhelming the number of issues that kept popping up. Thankfully, we are still intact and Ellis has been out of the hospital. She took many doses of her recue medication within those weeks, but it has safely kept us from making another ER visit. All in all, I’m proud of how we managed to survive those harrowing 2 months and still experience days of fun, rest, and joyful outings. Like Elliot expressed, “life came down hard all at once.”

Going back to the picture at the start of the blog, I hoped that the start to summer vacation would be mundane and carefree, but life had other crazy plans for June and July. It’s August now and we plan to take it chill before our charter school begins on the 17th. Thank God for a new week!

And I completely forgot that Chris and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary early June!