Ordinary Time

Since I wrote about needing to find a therapist for TM and then about making the phone call, I haven't really written much about that on the blog. Having told the world that I was going to look for a therapist, I wanted to finish the story, mainly because it's a good God story. God is faithful and listens to our cries. He certainly did that for me in my desperation to find help for my son. Having no idea where to start, I went to the website for the TCU Institute of Child Development because Dr. Karyn Purvis works there and I have a great respect for the work she does with children from hard places. I looked at their list of therapists who had trained with her and chose the closest one to me. (Close being a very relative term... it's an hour and a half away.) I called and made an appointment. I am a little embarrassed to admit that this was a call done out of desperation and not one that I took the time to research. The number was on a list and so I called. I did look...

like hair, for instance. (I have an appointment with a child this afternoon that is making me rather distracted and need a diversion.) And of course, since I tend to over think things, I wonder if it is really a frivolous subject. Over the past past six weeks, I have been waging a battle to change the part in H.'s hair to her non-affected side. (If you've ever changed a part, you know it can be done, but takes some time and effort to do.) Due to past surgeries, she has scarring where no hair grows. The trouble is that it is also the side that naturally wants to part. In doing this, I have questioned my motivations and what the tacit messages are that I may be sending to my daughter. I certainly don't want her to feel I am embarrassed by her and want to cover up the affected part of her face, nor do I want her to think there is a need to cover anything up. But who among us doesn't want to look the best we can and make the most of what we have been given? I know (beca...

Just a quick post today because for the first time in weeks the weather is warm and I want to enjoy it. A week ago, a friend gave us a stack of old games which had been passed along to her. When she asked if we wanted them I readily agreed because we are always up for new games around here. (Or old games as the case may be.) Often older games are just more fun than the newer ones, though the initial learning curve is a little steeper. Am I the only one who feels modern board games (excluding strategy games) have been dumbed down to the point where they are virtually unplayable? Here are a few... It was an interesting collection... a puzzle, a board game that combines checkers and rummy, a civil war game, and some others. We haven't tried the checkers version or the civil war game yet as I need some time to sit and figure out the instructions first. TM and D. were really interested in Battle-Cry, but opened the box, saw all the pieces and instructions and put it away to wai...

I know people are interested in what we eat and also in preparing inexpensive meals and I've been asked that question directly a time or two. The trouble is, when asked, my mind immediately goes blank and I have absolutely no idea what I fix and the things I do fix really don't seem remarkable. Yesterday as I was fixing dinner, I realized that I need to write down these meals as I think of them. So this is the beginning of a very sporadic series on frugal large family meals. As I think of them, I will share them with you. I don't know about you, but I really love recipes that make use of items that in other situations might be thrown away. You know... chicken soup, banana bread, and what I made last night: strata. I love strata because it makes a wonderful casserole using all that bread that my children try to avoid eating (aka the heels). It uses the same premise as French toast, but with a savory, main dish twist. How to make it: First you need a bunch of old bread ...

Thanks to my Kindle, I have been doing some over-indulging in what I call 'brain candy'. That would be those books (light mysteries for me) which are entertaining, but that's about all they have to recommend them. They are not great literature, I read them incredibly fast (at most an evening or two), and I usually forget them as soon as I finish them. It is pure escapism and I will occasionally go on binges of doing this. (I have to say I can indulge to a greater extent with my Kindle because I am not constrained by running out of books and having to leave my house to stock up at the library.) It is not necessarily something I'm proud of, but sometimes it seems my brain needs a rest and I feel incapable of reading anything of depth. At some point, though, I will pick-up whatever the current brain candy is, and realize that I have no desire to read it. I'm done. I've had enough. It's kind of the same feeling when you've been overindulging on sweets and ...

And why is it typical? Because I've started more than one project and left a trail of chaos in my wake. In my defense, it's that time of year when I look at the clothes my children have been wearing and realize that they have all grown and most of their clothes no longer fit. And if they do fit, they are fairly disreputable looking. So that means it's time to do the dreaded task of sorting through clothes. The fact that the laundry hasn't really been caught up for a while just adds to the chaos. But this morning, I had enough done that I felt I could make a start. K.'s are pretty much all done. It had been a loooong time since I had really had to go through his clothes since he has been the same size for quite a while. And then we would receive hand-me-downs from friends and the clothes we already had did that weird multiply-thing and as a result, he had so many clothes they didn't all fit in his dresser and I discovered that many of them didn't fit. Hoora...

Having alienated my entire blog readership with posts #997 , #998 , and #999 , I will now try to reverse this by dangling the promise of free stuff in front of you. It hardly seems possible that we started this blog almost exactly 6 years ago while we were still a family with 5 children and waiting to bring home TM. To say it's been an eventful six years wouldn't begin to describe it. In those six years, we have doubled the number of children in our family (including delivering full-term twins at advanced maternal age), traveled overseas three times and spent a total of 8 1/2 weeks in Asia, remodeled a good portion of our house, and have taken children to the doctor more than a couple of times. Also through this blog, I have met virtual friends who have become dear 'real life' friends, discovered I love writing, actually made a little money through that writing, and gained a confidence that I didn't have before. For better or worse, this blog has become a part of ...