Sickness

 We are doing our usual "someone gets sick and then passes it around the family" thing. I have it now. Yesterday was pretty bad and I was thinking maybe bronchotis. Today is better and while I still don't feel perky, and have a sore throat, I think I am on my way towards being Ok.

Why do colds have to take so long?

It isn't COVID at leaste; three of us checked and all were negative.

I was thinking recently about how one sign of being comfortable with our money situation is I don't hesitate to buy COVID tests and use them with reckless abandon whenever we are sick :-).

If we do get COVID (again) I want to know.

Kevin's mom is heading to Texas tomorrow along with Kevin's sister for a visit. Kevin's mom is doing well after surgery on her arm. It really is a gift from God how much has changed medically in the last hundred, fifty, twenty, and ten years. The surgery was outpatient, in and out, and will result in a much improved outcome.

It is annoying being sick over the holidays but life happens. Also, we didn't have any medical appointments this week so that is actually kind of helpful.

Christmas

We had Christmas! We had many gifts. It was a lot of fun.

A virus has been circling and I came down with it yesterday (Christmas Day). I am mostly really tired and thanks to older kids, I was able to take a four hour nap yesterday afternoon.

Kevin's sister is in town helping Kevin's mom, who is recovering as well as can be hoped for after breaking her arm.

Merry Christmas to all!

 

Injury

Not us, thankfully!

Last Friday, Kevin's mom fell and broke her left arm, poor thing! It is the sort of thing that can happen; a sudden trip and a bone is broken!

She is staying here for now though Kevin's sister is coming in tonight for a couple of weeks to help her.

So yeah, not what anyone wanted for Christmas week. But it could have been a hip so yes, that is good. Also it is her non dominant hand.

Mid December

 Just like that, it is halfway through December! So far we haven't had too much cold; well, I mean, sometimes in the thirties and even twenties at night, but no serious cold snaps.

Daniel made cardboard boats to float in a tub. Very creative! He figured it out from a book.

This is MINE. I am eating spaghetti again, using chickpea pasta. Lower carb than regular pasta.

I bought a loom for Rose and Sarah to make pot holders. They. Love. It. We have lots of pot holders now.

I took the four younger kids to the Air Force Museum today. We wandered around for half an hour and then watched an IMAX movie on Fighter Pilots. We were the only ones in the theater. How fun is that?

So I keep gaining weight which is annoying but not surprising. First, I am middle aged now and I think my metabolism has slowed down. Also, I am less active than I was when I had a whole bunch of little kids. I used to just tear around the house from sun up to sun down. Well, that is exaggerating but I was very busy and on my feet a lot.

When I had newborns and was nursing, I sat more but hey, the milk took calories1

Anyway, last week I decided that I was going to exercise after lunch every possible day. I don't like running or elliptical machines. I don't like being miserably hot and sweaty. We are blessed with 5 acres and right now there are no bugs. So every day I have been marching around our last three acres twice.

I have also been doing Beatsaber fairly often. And lifting very light 5 lb weights in each hand.

I have also been trying to eat less and that is the hard part. Ugh. I don't like being hungry. Truthfully, sometimes I eat because I am bored. Not often, but sometimes, which doesn't help.

So yeah, hopefully this will help me stay where I am or even lose weight. I am currently about 173 lbs. I am also 5 ft 8+ inches so that isn't really heavy, but as I have doubtless said before, ten years ago I was like 140 lbs so I have gained a lot of weight in the last decade.

Even if I don't lose weight, I will undoubtedly be healthier if I am getting regular exercise.

Rambling Thoughts on a Tuesday

 I am writing a new book because that is what authors do.  They write. This one is going rather slowly because life is busy; this week involves a number of doctor and orthodontic appointments. But the key is to keep on keeping on.

I have said before that I am a pantser. I get an idea for a story and I just start writing it and my brain comes up with the next bits as I write. It is really cool, and a gift from God, that I can do this. I am grateful. Our books continue to be very well received which is so sweet. I know I am not writing great literature. My books are fun and mostly mellow. Romance readers tend to read a lot and they like my books, which makes me happy. I will also say here that I am very careful to keep them clean and sweet; no steamy sex scenes in my books!

We have had a minor illness for more than a week now. Yesterday I was tilting my head and pulled something in my neck. Ouch. It isn't terrible but it is annoying.

I read part of an article a couple of days ago which keeps bothering me. A woman wrote an article for the Washington Post describing how she married young (21 or so) and had three kids in a few years and then one day decided she wasn't happy and insisted on divorcing her husband. Her husband was, apparently, a perfectly pleasant man, not abusive, faithful, hard working, etc. She wanted more. So she broke up her family and she had absolutely no shame about it. She "wasn't happy" and didn't give a rip about her small children (the eldest was 5) being thrown into a broken home.

I find it very upsetting because divorce causes long term scars in children. I am NOT saying that divorce is always wrong; there are times when divorce is the best of bad options. In cases of abuse and cheating and abandonment, it may be the right thing to do. But this woman just decided she wasn't happy, and she bailed.

She is still caring for her kids half of the time but still...it is hard on kids when their parents aren't together. There have been studies showing that kids don't just shake it off. It causes permanent effects.

And yet, her viewpoint is perfectly reasonable from the perspective of someone who doesn't believe in a God who reigns and rules. If this life is all there is, than "being happy" is the most important thing. I guess?

So it is sad but not surprising.

I have been thinking too about how parenting is a long haul, and especially when a couple has nine kids and their youngest in their mid 40's!

I am 54 and Rose is 9! 

Rose deserves a diligent mother and father, and Kevin and I often pray for wisdom and the ability to do what we should do with our time and energy.

I have a couple of homeschooling books written by a very intelligent woman who was the youngest of six children; she was strong willed, and her parents were tired, and she went off the rails in her 20's.

Now, kids can go off the rails regardless of parenting, that is for sure! However, she says her parents were too tired to discipline her properly and that was NOT good for her.

So yes, I am trying to be as diligent in guiding and loving Rose as I was with Naomi, in spite of being 15 years older now than when Naomi was 9!

Life is way easier in some ways, of course; no babies, no toddlers trying to damage themselves by climbing on the chandeliers.

Well, I should go wake up the children who are still sleeping. This illness makes people tired, but it is 10:30 a.m.

Early December

 

I hang banners for various exciting days throughout the year. We have a Birthday Banner, and a Christmas Banner, and  New Year's banner, and a Thanksgiving banner, and so on and so forth. Rose decided to get into the action this year by making a "Black Friday" banner, which is adorable.

Random picture of all our desserts for Thanksgiving.

Sarah painted this. Yes, my girls are amazing artists.

We have this cute little spot out the back door which is usually quite a bit warmer than elsewhere when it is sunny; the wind is blocked by walls, and the sunlight reflects and it is cozy. Also, the cats like Isaac.

Our sun room has writing all over it from our days with small people who wrote on walls. Joseph is heroically working on cleaning it.

Sarah got a diamond painting craft for her birthday. 

Sarah is tall.

In other news, we published another book. Yes, that is crazy but... I finished Elizabeth Bennet's Inheritance in early October and immediately settled down to write a Christmas story which, as I said in my last post, I finished last week. We published two days ago. It is shorter than my usual books but doing well so far.

In other interesting news, Joseph is now a monetized youtuber. Youtube pays people if they have more than 1000 subscribers and over 4000 (I think) watching hours of the channel. He does these incredibly complex mods (modifications) of a game called Terraria. He has taught himself how to code and change things like how the villains interact and so on. He has been doing this for several years, and last week a particular video went viral among the Terraria community. He quickly soared above the requisiste 1000 subscribers and is now over 2000 subscribers!

It is exciting and will provide a little bit of income for him. Not enough for him to quit his day job -- not that he has one now, as he is studying for IT certification, but still, very fun!

We have some minor illness moving through the house. I am very tired and have been having peculiar dreams. Other than that, mostly Ok thankfully.

December is frankly a little stressful for me; we have three birthdays to celebrate, and Christmas too. But times they are changing. The children can do a lot of the work (like putting up the Christmas tree) and Kevin has graciously taken care of the purchasing of the presents. So I can just enjoy myself, and I intend to!

Oh, one last thing! The biggest concern for both Kevin and me about him quitting his job was finding health insurance. Thanks to Obamacare, we are signed up for a Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance plan starting in January which will be very managable, and which includes dental and vision. We will have to change dental offices unfortunately, but it is still awesome to have that sorted out.