Overwhelmed

I haven't made a post here in four months and it's never even occurred to me that I needed to do so. Things in our house have been utter chaos the last few months. I will give an abbreviated update with the hope that things will settle down soon and I'll be able to post a little more often.

Three weeks into the school year, Youngest Daughter got sick and developed pneumonia. It eventually spread to Oldest Daughter and myself, while Husband and Son didn't seem to get quite as bad. Right as everyone was getting over being sick, Grandmother developed an infection in her toe. The infection spread to the blood and eventually to her blood. She developed a massive staph infection following this and was admitted to the hospital. Her toe was amputated and then she had an emergency valve replacement in her heart after the staph infection trashed a valve. She spent five weeks in a rehab facility before coming home. She has now been home since just before Thanksgiving. Her recovery has been slow and I'm not optimistic that she will bounce back fully from this.

Son is running in 100 Mile Club this year and should be passing 60 miles today. Youngest Daughter has been thoroughly enjoying preschool even though she comes home exhausted every afternoon. Oldest daughter is miles ahead of the rest of her kindergarten class and is excelling in reading and beginning math. Husband asked for a promotion to a new position that will be opening up in the late summer, so fingers crossed that it works out.

We went on a tour of the local preparatory charter school last week and dropped off Intent to Enroll paperwork for all three kids, then this morning I heard that the principal there resigned this morning fairly unexpectedly. I'm confident that the staff there can get things back on track and straightened out before Winter Break is over, or at least shortly thereafter. At any rate, my friend who does not enjoy the holidays may welcome the chaos as a distraction (she's a founder at the school).

In the midst of the ongoing situation at our house, I haven't worked at all since.... July? This year I even spaced out on teacher gifts so I spent the last two days working as quickly as possible to put together a necklace for Oldest Daughter's kindergarten teacher. I finished it last night around 11:30 pm. Son chose a jar of homemade jam to take to his teacher. Amazingly, we have all of our gift shopping nearly finished. Anyway, here's the necklace I sent to Daughter's teacher, and it will probably be my final project of the year.