Open sesame

I finally did it! 

I've been saying for about a year now that I'm going to learn how to pick locks as part of our homeschool curriculum. I bought stuff for this purpose before Thanksgiving. And, today, I finally got everything out and boys and I spent a lovely afternoon learning how to pick locks. :)

Not like we're experts yet or anything. ;) But we watched some videos and looked at diagrams and messed around a LOT with the materials we have. What we've learned so far is that handcuffs are pretty easy to get out of:

And pin and tumbler sets are considerably more difficult...

(In case you're wondering, I got supplies here.) 

The main set has pin and tumbler sets ranging from one pin to five pins (five pins being much more difficult obviously). So far I've only succeeded in picking the one pin lock. :( The boys are up to the three pin lock.

I foresee boys working on and practicing this particular skill for awhile... ;) 

Marvelous

I don't think the word "marvelous" gets used often enough. ;) 

I'm feeling pretty good this beautiful Monday, so I'm going to use it in my recap of the last few days...

It was MARVELOUS last Friday when I finally made it back to boot camp and was greeted with this marvelous sunrise on my way home from the gym:

(I didn't go to boot camp on Monday or Wednesday on account of the vertigo.) On Wednesday, I finally started thinking straight enough to talk to my audiologist friend who recommended a specific exercise/motion for dealing with the vertigo (see here), which helped! Soooo lovely to be able to think straight again. :) Hooray for friends who are audiologists! (Love you, Molly!)

After boot camp on Friday, then, I got to have a MARVELOUS lunch with these two marvelous ladies:

You wouldn't believe me if I tried to describe the hilarity and sincerity of our time together. Love. :)

And the next day was simply so MARVELOUS that I took my bookends for a walk (Asher was out with Nathan), and we broke up ice around our neighborhood (trying to help it melt quicker and be less bumpy, lol) and then walked to Dairy Queen to treat ourselves to some ice cream. The weather was gorgeous! Along the way, Noah had me take this picture:

He thought it was just marvelous how the water was streaming below the ice. :) (Sidenote: For all that he's a serious teen and such, I love how Noah will often point out small things like this. On another walk not long ago, Noah stopped to point out a woodpecker and the two of us took a few extra minutes to simply toss rocks on the frozen ice. Marvelous. Love those moments!)

And then on Sunday I got to have lunch out with my MARVELOUS husband and run a few errands together. I then headed over to the gym to walk and run on the treadmill while watching the last quarter of the Packers-Seahalks NFL playoff game. (We don't have tv/cable at home.) Wow. What a last quarter, right?! (Plus, I managed more than an hour of treadmill time, so felt pretty good about that, too.)

And today, this MARVELOUS Monday, I managed boot camp and getting all three boys to the dentist (no cavities!) before meeting up with five friends and their kiddos at the park to let the kids run off excess energy and try to catch up some on each other's lives, as we're all in varying states of homeschooling and schooling (having all met while exclusively homeschooling). The weather could have cooperated better (I'm talking to you, wind!) but I really shouldn't complain about a 50+ degree day in January. :) It was MARVELOUS watching all the kids run and play together, even when some of them haven't seen each other in ages.

Feeling so blessed that my younger two still find simply running and playing at the park so very satisfying. :) Also, so very thankful for these women in my life. Even when we can't make regular time to get together, I know they're there and they get it and we're here for each other. MARVELOUS.

Speaking of superheroes...

Noah's freewrite topic in his English class today...which superpower would you rather have, flight or invisibility? Noah shared this with us after school. He went with flight. Nathan and Asher, independently, also chose flight. Micah and I quickly chose invisibility.

According to Noah, only a few people in his class chose invisibility, and the professor said that that's normal and is usually indicative of those students he should keep an eye on as potential troublemakers, lol.

Yup. Probably true. ;)

Miss Vertigo

That's what it said on the patient board (that they wouldn't let me take a picture of, lol) outside my room at Urgent Care this morning. Fun times.

Yup. Apparently I have a case of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. It's an inner ear thing. I've actually had it before, about 15 years ago. Last night was pretty bad..room spinning, lots of nausea, profuse sweating (probably caused by the anxiety of everything spinning), and chills (from the sweating). I ended up in bed from about 6pm until this morning. This morning was considerably better, actually...so long as I go in slow motion. But. Nathan still took me to Urgent Care because obviously sudden onset vertigo is a problem...especially given how often I drive these boys around. ;) 

(Many thanks to my lovely husband for taking boys to their schools this morning and making lunches and driving me to the doctor and lunch and the pharmacy. Not exactly how we imagined spending our day. Ugh.)

So. Got a lovely CT scan just to rule stuff out. (My "bony structures are unremarkable" according to the report, thank-you-very-much.) Got some lovely meds for anti-nausea and to help with dizziness and a steroid to help with inflammation in my ear(s). I should be good to go by tomorrow.

Whew. All good.

Plus, don't you think "Miss Vertigo" sounds like a superhero? ;)

One month in...

Just a quick update on how Asher's braces experience is going...

The first picture is before braces (obviously)...the next picture is the day after he got the braces and the last picture is today...one month later.

Honestly, we're pretty amazed at the progress...that we can already see the effects. Woohoo!