An Interesting Week

    Hello Again!
This week is minutes away from being over and I hadn't even said "Hi!" yet on this blog of mine. I hope you are all doing well! This week has been interesting and though there was quite a lot of time spend relaxing I didn't manage to actually write a post.

   On Sunday our church started it's turn for hosting Servants of Shelter (a program that let some of the homeless stay in church buildings). After church we had a fellowship dinner and then stay around for a while and helped to get ready for the people to arrive at 4 pm. We left before they arrived as I needed to take the kids to their monthly 4-H meeting.

   Sunday evening we ended up playing a family game and then I needed to get to bed early so I could be up by 4:15 am to head out for my shift at S.O.S. . For some reason when I need to get up early I have a hard time getting to sleep - It is very rare for me to have trouble with that otherwise. So I greeted Monday with less than 5 hours of restless sleep. That's all right. :-)

   Megan decided she wanted to go with me so I helped her set her alarm. By they time I was dressed and ready she was down in the living room waiting for me. At SOS we had our quiet time (people were still sleeping) and then made sack lunches and pancakes for breakfast.

   We got home before Ken left for work at 8:45. Monday is our big cleaning and laundry day so I did get the mopping done and laundry but I was dragging. We also did school work and I taught 3 music lessons, took Jonathan to his robotics meeting and then made one of my best meals lately (I have not been feeling very inspired with cooking lately)- fried steak chunks with Shitake mushroom sauce, brown rice and broccoli with cheese.

    On Tuesday I got up from a good night of rest (we had gone to bed earlyish because Ken had a cold and wasn't feeling good) but I was still feeling really tired. Worse than the day before. We got going though with schoolwork and I taught my three students that morning. During the teaching my stomach started feeling off too. Uh-oh! I wasn't sure if there was really a problem though so I decided to skip lunch (I wasn't hungry) and immediately take a nap and see if I felt better afterwards in order to teach my 5 afternoon students. I took a long nap but didn't feel any better when I got up so I figured that I would call them. Before I could make it to the phone however I lost my breakfast. Okay, so now it was quite obvious that I was sick.

   So I cancelled the rest of Tuesday's students and Wednesday's students too and I did a lot of sleeping the rest of that day and the next. I did also read a fun book about the Depression. It was amazing how very little I got done! I felt so very thankful for my kids who are pretty compassionate and helpful when one is sick and who can totally run the house without me.

  Wednesday night Ken brought home a new game he had ordered "Ticket to Ride". It is one we have played with others before and enjoyed. Since we didn't have church because it had been cancelled because so many were sick with the same thing I had and SOS was going on and we just didn't want to spread germs around any more and even if there would have been church I wasn't feeling good enough to go anyway. So our family had fun playing our new game instead.

   While playing our game my Mom called with the news that my sister Keren was in the hospital to have the baby. She had been sick too and had gone into labor 2 weeks early (I wonder if stomach flu can help get things going if you are basically ready physically anyway). So that was exciting. At least for most of us. Ken wasn't quite so happy. Keren is his only employee just now at his insurance agency and he has been looking for someone to replace her (for months now) but has found the search quite difficult and still doesn't have anybody hired.

   My nephew Ephraim was born around 10:30 pm. He is adorable and healthy. This is the first nephew or niece that was born in the town where I lived. We are very excited to get to be around him often.

  Thursday was a day of trying to catch up a little around the house and thankfully I was feeling good again and so we did go see Ephraim and his parents. What fun! We also went to help out at SOS that evening and serve supper.

   Friday morning I had a wedding flower consultation and that afternoon we had an ice skating party. The kids had handed out invitations for the skating party at homeschool group last week. A nice group of around 40 came.

  The boys had used the drill with a long big to carefully test the ice depth and it was plenty deep. So they shoveled a nice long and fairly skinny rink near our shore line. They worked hard to get it all ready. We made snacks too and had hot chocolate and tea. Mara thought it would be fun to have hot chocolate outside on a fire on the bank and so the kids did get a fire going and we heated water but everybody ended up coming in for the treats.

 It was a chilly day hovering around zero but it was warmer than it had been and lots warmer than it is now and people dressed warmly.

 The challenge with the rink definitely is the getting up and down the bank. I tied a rope on a tree at the top so that people could hold on to that to try to help pull themselves up.

 The boys made an obstacle course with piles of snow.

 Quite a few got to skate for the first time and enjoyed it.

Vange kept working to keep the "rink" cleaned off. We have a rope tied to a tree on the bank that they use in the summer to hang onto to jump into the water. Skaters had fun holding on to it too to help them do fun tricks. I still haven't skated this year but hope to soon. During the party I spent most of my time inside with the large crowd that was in there staying warm, eating and playing games.

  This morning Megan and I helped at SOS again. The program allows 20 people to use it but there aren't that many just now (which seems to be a good thing!) - the last two nights there have only been 4 men and the most we had was 8 one night or so.

 Well that was my week. Interesting but good too. How was your week?