Highs And Lows

The Highs:

A birthday gift from  Dorina in NYC and a Get Well card from Eva in NY state, both arrived in the same postal delivery!  Thank you dear friends for thinking of me, your friendship is much appreciated x 

Outside knitting and eating.

Ben having fun building a wooden shoe rack for the hallway.

A Saturday morning cooked breakfast only a five minute walk from our home.

Beginning to make contacts and friendships within our church community, most especially there are three other church folk living with MS that also attend our Sunday mass!  

A new lounge carpet and bathroom flooring upstairs.

The Lows:

A perfect storm of a dodgy u-bend, a sink that was slow to empty and a knocked tap equals a flood in the upstairs bathroom!  Hence the need for new flooring as well as a complete redecoration of the lounge and dining room ceiling.  It quite literally never rains but pours!

Who knew that Pringles plain crisps also contained yeast extract?  No, me neither!!  One of the very offending substances that I have painstakingly avoided for an entire year, so no wonder I am now dealing with another horrid candida flare :-(  Thankfully the GP has prescribed a systemic treatment so things will settle eventually.

Pip has been increasingly unhappy at school.  In addition to the issues with one of the girls she is also struggling with the relentless pace of work.  She was off school last week due to a virus and a reaction to the MMR vaccine and despite being sick was relieved that she did not have to go to school.  For the last few weeks she has felt a complete failure because she is struggling to keep up.  I had a meeting with her teacher today and in order for Pip to have a hope of managing next year we would have to guarantee 100% attendance as well as Pip working at 110%; both of these goals are totally unrealistic! 

 It has been an interesting journey trying out mainstream school and it has confirmed my thoughts that schools are just number crunching machines with little regard for the well being of the children in their care. Needless to say Pip will be home schooled as from September with the longer term view of her attending Myerscough college once she is fourteen.  So with a bit of luck I should be hopefully posting our usual home school stories as and when they occur :-)

Helping

Having read about Eva's first day  I pressed the kids into action and gave them plenty of helping jobs around the home.  There is definitely truth in that old saying, "the devil makes work for idle hands" and since Dad and I were sick of their constant bickering keeping them busy provided a much needed outlet for their energy.

Sara and I have been working on painting the front of the house so Benedict and Pip helped scrape off the peeling paintwork:

Benedict also mowed the back lawns and gathered up the apples and pears that had fallen from the trees.  After swimming Pip helped with folding the laundry:

I have just come in from outside painting and am now working my way through youtube links and learning sites, for Benedict and I start school next week when Pip returns on Monday.  He officially enters secondary education and so there is an interesting learning curve ahead for both of us.  Wish me luck!