Joy, week 25

Week 25.  That sounds big.   As in, half way there.  Scary.  And as for the picture, I know I need a new one, I have since I took this one, but I have no idea when I’ll get around to it.  Like so many things in my life.

Well, it was another busy week.  The biggest news of the week is that I was right.  My husband needs surgery on his knee.  An MRI confirmed that he tore his ACL, his meniscus, and chipped the femur.  All kinds of things going on in there, with all kinds of pain for him.  The surgery will be this week, so he just misses the 2 month anniversary since our son’s surgery on his ankle.  I’m hoping we don’t keep moving up the leg with joint injuries.  I’ll be thrilled if this is our last for a while.  It’s been hard for me to watch him but nice to try to take care of him as he forces himself to bend and straighten his leg so it won’t be too stiff, and even harder to watch him emotionally grapple with what this means for all his favorite sports.  It will be a long break.  I worry and hope he’ll be ok.

But life goes on, even when you’re going from office to office for this x-ray and that appointment.  So we had soccer three days a week for both of our girls (I think they both got something like a 5 day break), piano lessons, violin lesson, a campout, a Scout outing to the Great Salt Lake, movie nights, swimming, friends, and so forth.  Lots of good stuff to keep us busy!  Add my incredibly busy two year old to the mix and there is never a dull moment.

My daughter made a goal to cook dinner for the whole family for a week.  It’s been quite funny to turn to her in the afternoon and ask what’s for dinner.  Seriously, this was no small project considering we have ten people to feed every day.  She has spent hours in the kitchen and tackled some of my more difficult/time consuming recipes.  Her younger sister joined in many times and it’s been a source of happiness for all of us.  I’m very pleased with her efforts, and also with her sense of humor.  Perhaps I should let her keep going since the cherry tart I made for dessert tonight ended up all over the floor.

That dessert reminds me of something.  I had a conversation with my husband this week about my totally ridiculous coping skills.  I was marveling at my ability to quickly find good things to focus on when we have something big happen, but when something little happens I snap.  So silly.  What you can infer from that is that I took all the knee problems in stride with grace and was completely ticked off about my dessert.  The reason I mentioned it to my husband was to jokingly reassure him that I’m not going to get hurt since the Lord knows that all he needs to push me to my limit is to have something little go wrong.  I guess I store up all this stress over the big things and then when something small, which I counted on, goes wrong, all the stress oozes out the corners of my eyes.  I need to work on that.

Let’s see.  My entire focus so far this summer has been on getting my kids in a good habit of working hard around the house.  I feel like I’ve done pretty well with this effort, although we haven’t perfected it yet, especially on those mornings when there’s driving to do.  Still, I’m liking what’s happening.  The biggest challenge is that when I focus on getting the big kids to be detail oriented and work hard, the little ones escape, and when I focus on the little ones it seems that the big ones get off easy.  Perhaps I should just go to an every other day schedule, planning to focus on each age group in alternating fashion.   Overall we’re making strides.

Yesterday I did some weeding of my favorite flowerbed in 95 degree weather.  It’s nice to reclaim that area and I enjoyed getting reacquainted with my plants.  Many of my plans for the yard will be postponed due to the knee surgery.  I’m just not sure we’ll get to them this year, and that’s ok.  The lavender is in full bloom, and I’ve got to get outside and harvest it quickly or I’ll miss it.  Our vegetable gardens aren’t what I wish they were, but once again, it’s ok.  These are busy years, and I’m really raising children.

I finished a book this week.   I had a great talk or two with my parents this week.   We got some good news.  Most of the things on my list weren’t touched, but we had some fairly urgent LIFE tasks to take care of.

So we prep for a surgery this week, and hope for the best!
Life is great.

Jennifer