Our Week In Review – May 23, 2009

I believe that you may safely say that this week has been one of the worst of the last few years.  I haven’t posted much in the last couple of days because I’ve just been feeling overwhelmed.  On a positive note, I am learning the meaning of “pray without ceasing”.

In this post, I related the story of Uncle B and his having a heart attack last weekend and heart surgery on Tuesday.  This week was spent largely in a state of unease and uncertainty.  We didn’t know if Uncle B was going to survive.  If he did, how long would he be in the hospital and would his wife need help caring for him?

Rosie Girl and Wild Man were having their own stresses about the whole thing.  They were distressed about Uncle B being so sick and possibly dying.  But, they were also concerned about possibly missing their dance recital this upcoming weekend.  They have worked all year getting ready for this recital and both were devastated that they might have to miss the recital.  But, it was almost worse not really knowing what was going to happen.

Thursday night, my dad called to say that one of the doctors said that Uncle B had had a massive heart attack and wasn’t expected to live through the night.  Then, in the wee hours of the morning, the heart surgeon came through and said that Uncle B had not had another heart attack and was as stable as he had been, although, of course, remaining critically ill.  But, by Friday evening, the doctors were all more pessimistic about Uncle B’s prognosis.  This morning, my dad called again to tell me that Uncle B had died.

So, what do we do?  I feel that kids should generally be involved in family events like births and deaths as much as possible.  How, though, do we resolve the dance recital and now a funeral?  We decided that Mr. Math Tutor and I would go down to Mississippi for the funeral but that the kids would stay here for the recital.  We had asked a friend who just graduated from college if she would stay with the kids and get them to rehearsals during the week until Grandma (Mr. Math Tutor’s mom) could get here and help us out.  Guess what, though?  Grandma got a flight today and just got here this evening!  So, Grandma will get the kids to their dance rehearsals and recitals during the next week so Mr. Math Tutor and I can go be with the family and attend the funeral.

Thursday night, I told the kids that we would go ahead and be done with our official schoolwork for the year.  We hadn’t done much during the week anyway.  We will continue to listen to Story of the World and watch some pertinent DVR shows.  This week we learned more about Napoleon and watched a pretty good Nat Geo show about Napoleon.  We may not be doing “real” school again until late July, but I’m sure we’ll get plenty of learning in.

I did some serious cooking on Thursday.  I made four casseroles and put them in the freezer, anticipating that we might need them at some point.  Well, it turns out that Grandma and the kids will get to use them this week!  Nice to be prepared.

Crazy week, but we learned more about real life than we ever would have learned if the kids have been in school!

Check our Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what others have been doing this week!