Unexpected August 29, 2008

I got a phone call yesterday that pretty much shocked me and thrilled me beyond words.  Back story:

On August 9th of last year I was in a car accident.  My sister had just gotten here from Canada, had been here for 3 days and we decided to run out for a small shopping excursion, just her and I.  While sitting at a red light we were rear-ended badly.  A kid was flying down the road, paying no attention to what he was doing and slammed into our car going about 45-50 MPH.  We were sitting behind a pick-up truck that was raised higher than normal (good thing, that!) and when we were hit, our car was shoved under the bed of the truck and the hood of our car was bent completely in half and pushed right up against the windshield.   I think about the ‘could have beens’ with that accident.  If we had been stopped behind an SUV or just anything besides a lifted pick-up, we would have been hurt pretty badly.  If we had had any kids with us, they would have been injured.  It was a miserable experience, to say the least.

I hired a lawyer immediately after the accident and I started seeing a chiropractor 1 week after the accident.  I expected to eventually receive a settlement from this accident and it took a lot longer to get it than I thought it would.  But in May I did get a settlement.  After my lawyer’s fees and medical payments, I got a check for $3,000.  That money was nice and came in very handy.  Our washer and dryer were both on the verge of death.  The washer wouldn’t spin out water if the cycle was started at it’s largest capacity.  Even at a lower capacity, it would oftentimes leave water in the basin.  And the dryer was not getting hot enough to dry the clothes on one cycle, we had to run it through 2 or 3 times.  So, with the money from the settlement, I spent just over $1,000 on a brand new washer and dryer from Home Depot.  They are not front load but I’m still thrilled to bits with them.  I got the biggest washer and dryer capacity that I could find.  I can wash an entire hamper full of clothes.  Awesome.

We also bought a pickup truck for Dave.  We needed a second car and he has been wanting a truck for years.  It’s small and cheap but runs very well and came with brand new tires.  Not much else matters!!  Dave is happy and that’s all that matters to me.  I gave him $1500 for the down payment on the truck.  That left us with $500 from the settlement.  I think I spent a couple hundred on odds and ends for myself.  And we paid a bill or two with the rest.  I was very happy with the way it worked out and while I would have liked a much bigger settlement, I couldn’t complain about what I ended up with because I wasn’t hurt badly and have no lingering pain from the accident.

So, you can imagine my surprise and joy to get a phone call from my lawyer’s office yesterday saying that they had another check for me!!!   I was stunned!!  I didn’t get to my phone on time so I got a voice mail about it.  I was thinking that maybe the check was a few hundred dollars or so.  I couldn’t think of why I’d be getting more money since I was led to believe that my case was settled and we were good.  When I finally got in touch with the lawyer’s office, I was told that they had a check for me that was $2, 840!!   Wow!  And YAY!!!  I was shocked and sooo happy.  I picked it up and deposited it last night.  It came in at the exactly perfect time.  Could not have been better timing.  I had planned to order Max’s school stuff a little at a time over the next month or so since I knew it’d be several hundred dollars for everything that I wanted.  The first thing I thought of was that I could buy all of his school stuff at one time, right away.  So last night I spent a couple of hours placing a gigantic order at Rainbow Resource’s website.  The order ended up being $560!!  But I got 99% of everything he’ll need for the whole year.  I also ordered a couple of things from Highlights.com (Which Way USA and Top Secret Adventures Club), I found out about these from reading Mel’s website and Max thought they were cool so we are going to try them.

The rest of the money we are spending on bills.  Cause we are practical like that.  So I’ve set up my bank account to send a check to pay our living expenses (cable, electric, phone, etc.) and a car payment and now, we are totally caught up on all bills and almost all the money I got yesterday is spoken for.  But I feel good.  So, so good.  We still have some money and I hope to buy a desktop computer to replace the one the kids use (it’s about 10 yrs. old) and I am going to buy a printer that is wireless so I don’t have to keep bringing my laptop into the other room to print things.   Plus the one I currently use is old (hand-me-down from my mom) and it’s starting to have some problems printing which is rather annoying.  I think I’ll look for a good bookcase for our school stuff and then our extra monies will be nearly all gone.   I am satisfied and so happy.   It was so unexpected and it came at the perfect time.   It’s so awesome when things like this happen!!

And now I am off to shower and take the kids out to breakfast and do a bit of shopping.  Fun day!! 

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes August 28, 2008

My life has changed very much this month.  Well, my life will be changing very much by the decisions I made this month.    First- I am very excited to report that I have started the enrollment process at the local community college.  I am going to be taking the Medical Transcription course.  If all goes as planned, I’ll be starting in the Spring semester (January 9th).  It’s a one year course and I should finish shortly after Elaina starts school.  I should be able to find work fairly easily around here.  I think David is more than ready to have the burden of providing an income become a shared burden.  I’ve been a SAHM since I was 20 (I am 33 now.) and it worked for us since me being home with our children was more important to us than having extra money.  But it’s time to think about life after babies and pre-schoolers.  I am very excited and honestly can not wait to start.  I need to get my GED transripts ordered and sent, I need to take the placement tests (I’ll ace it since there is no math.  LOL) and then I have to work on financial aid and when all that is done, I’ll finish up any enrollment paperwork and I’ll be officially official.   All grown up and all that.  Fun stuff!!

To make life a smidge more ‘interesting’, I have decided to homeschool Maxwell this year.  I’ve taken care of the state requirements and he’s been withdrawn from public school.  It’s kind of surreal right now.  I had decided that homeschooling wasn’t for me and had come to terms with that.  So what happened??  Well, I’ll tell ya!

Last Wednesday was the Open House at the kids’ middle school.  Max didn’t indicate that he was unhappy with school starting before this night.  But when we got there he became very sullen and withdrawn.  He would not look his teachers in the eye and he was just a very different, unhappy person.  We had a long wait between the 7th/8th grade Open House and the 6th graders’ turn.  We went and got a bite to eat between sessions and I took the time to talk to him about what he was feeling.  I asked him what he was feeling and if he was excited about starting school the next week.  He said he didn’t want school to start and that he hated that school.  This conversation led to more discussions about how he was feeling, what he was thinking and ultimately I ended up offering to homeschool him this year if it would make him happy.  I said we could give it a try and see how it went.  I just hated to see him so upset and I know that last year was not a good one for him.  So he gave it a lot of thought and we talked about the pros and cons of homeschooling and his dad talked to him one on one about it and Max revealed that he had no friends in the school and was very unhappy.  He wanted to try homeschooling.  So, the next day I sent the Letter of Intent to the state along w/ the required documentation and went to the school and withdrew him.  He was happier than I thought he would be with our decision.  And is still very confident that this is what he wants.

I am now working on choosing our curriculum. I have 90% of everything chosen and I have to order it all slowly over the next few weeks.  I am not going with a boxed curriculum, I am picking what I think would work well for us for all the subjects.  And I’ve found several fun projects that other homeschoolers are doing with their kids that I want to try.  I was looking at something online last night and Max was like ‘Yeah!  I want to do that one! I want to try that!’  He was excited about his options.  I look forward to being able to order stuff and get started with our newest adventure.  It will certainly change our lives and my quiet, lonely, slow days.  I am sort of worried that in a few months Max will be miserable and regretting his decision.  I want it to work out and for us to succeed.  I fully expect bumps along the way and for us to figure things out through trial and error.  But overall I expect we’ll be okay.  My biggest concern is my depression.  I worry that it will interfere with my ability to cope and I’ll really drop the ball.  I don’t obsess about it but I do think about it and it’s something I have to take into consideration because it is a disease I have no control over.  And it does have a huge affect on my life, on our lives.

In other news!!  My Madeline is now a middle schooler.  She is in 6th grade now and so far is loving it.  It’s day 2 and she’s still in the honeymoon period.  When she gets a boat load of homework everyday and she has to deal with all of the pressure from other kids every day, the shiny, pretty gleam will wear off fast.  I have already found reason to HATE middle school!! (Hold on, I need to climb up on the soapbox…) She said her ‘friends’ (who are ELEVEN YEARS OLD!!!) were talking about sex the other day.  SEX!!  And one of the girls JUST turned 11 in May.  So she’s BARELY 11 years old.  What can they know about sex?  Why are they talking about it???  It just boggles my mind.  And Madeline has to deal with this on the first day of school??  Imagine what she’ll have to listen to by the end of the year or in 7th grade!  I’m disgusted.   I don’t understand the parents of these kids. Where are they?  Why are they allowing their kids to ‘date’ in elementary school?  What are they exposing their kids to that sex is even in their vocabulary at such a young age??  The ONLY reason we discuss it with Madeline at all is because I know she’s being exposed to the topic in school.  I can’t let her go in and be unprepared for what to expect.  I hate public middle schools.  Hate.  But I am only hoping she has a good year and I know that if it comes down to it, I know that homeschooling is an option for us.

Samantha was kept back in 2nd grade so she started her 2nd year of 2nd grade this week.  She got a different teacher than she had last year.  She’s happy about that and so far she seems to love her.  She has also started on meds for ADD.  I honestly don’t know if that’s what she has.  But there is something up with her and it’s not anything I can figure out.  If the meds don’t help or make her sick or just make her worse in other areas, I will stop them ASAP.  I don’t know what to do for her so we are giving this a shot.  I was hoping to see it affect her personality (in a good way) but the meds wear off by the time she gets home so I can’t say that there is any difference in her at all.  I will see how things go on Saturday and Sunday.

Other than school stuff going on, we have my sister and her kids here from Canada.  She got here the first weekend in August and is leaving tomorrow.  I have enjoyed her company so much and will miss her terribly  when she goes home.  Seeing them once a year for 3 weeks is just not enough for any of us. I really, really want her to stay. 

Yesterday we made tie-dye shirts for all of the kids and we finished them up today.  They came out so cool!!  I’ve never done them before and I’m am psyched with how they came out.  You just never know what you’ll get and it’s like opening a present when you take the rubber bands off.  We were thrilled to bits with how they came out.  We took lots of pics too (which annoyed the kids very much.  LOL), I have to process them first and then I can show off our handy work.  We try to do something with the kids each year so they have something to take home and remember for the whole year.  One year we did pillow cases with fabric/puff paints.  I want to tie-dye again, it was the most fun and had the best results.  The shirts just look SO cool!    I think I’m going to buy a kit for my kids soon and make some more cool shirts.

If any homeschoolers read this, I would LOVE very much any advice and resources links and any suggestions you may have to offer!!  You can email me if you’d like or comment here.  I am looking for any help (by way of advice, suggestions, etc) that I can get.  It’ll be a couple of weeks before we officially start but it’ll happen soon and it’s such a huge step.