A Quick Update

Nothing too fancy folks.....just a quick update as it's been a few days.

I'm feeling the push to get ready for the holidays. I have learned to dig in my heels and fight it until Advent starts. Brian and I have done a lot of our Christmas shopping, but that's it. The kids are looking forward to baking. We've invited some friends over to make gingerbread houses. Kori's birthday parties fall in there somewhere and the regular bits of holiday visiting we do. Grandma Maddie will be visiting as well. Serendipitous that her trip to town lands on the only free days on our calendar!! So...

Last Friday the kids had a full day at the Museum. They enjoyed and did fine. Came home with lots of artwork. I enjoyed a surprise lunch date with Brian, Christmas shopping and a long, drawn-out coffee with a friend.

The weekend was busy-ish. We attended the local Santa Clause parade. It was somewhat disappointing. I can complain in detail later. I'm thinking of taking the kids out of town to an evening Parade of Lights this weekend to compensate. Took the kids skating on Sunday. Kori did very well on her new hockey skates. I think that weekend skating will become an enjoyable habit.

We jumped back into our casual pick-up-what's-interesting school habit this week. That included stopping by a friend's place for some garage-hockey for the kids on Monday. Interesting how little boys don't find doing the splits on cold concrete while wearing hockey pads uncomfortable. Yet they can't sit still for 15 on a warm, soft couch to read a book they picked out. I hung up the Canada map and a few postcards we received from around Canada from other homeschoolers. The kids dove right in to making our own postcards to send out. So, more work on that today. Picked some books up at the library last night - we've always got things for read aloud on hand.

A full week has passed since we went to Ottawa for Rai's appointment. On Monday, I got a call with our appointment times. On Tuesday, I got the letter with the testing procedures and directions. I am not looking forward to this. We've talked about the schedule of the day of the test with Raiden. But not the actual procedure. Last night on the way home he asked if we had the information on the test yet because he wanted to know "what he was up against". Super. He also said if there were needles, he wasn't doing it. Unfortunately, he will have to do it. That and much more. One way or the other (that is, whether the kidney is working well or not) he will have surgery to correct this. I'm hoping to put Rai off for a couple of more days before I have to explain catheters and IVs to him. I was really hoping to wait until after Christmas. But if Rai seems to think he wants to know now, so he has time to process, think and talk about it, then that's good too.

That's about all for now, I suppose. I'm off to get Kori out of bed and to start our reading.