I’ve been thoroughly enjoying this holiday season with my new philosophy guiding my every word and deed. I’ve purposed to give God the biggest gift of all by ME not stressing out about anything. It’s worked wonders! Each day I’ve remained calm and I haven’t raised my voice once. I’ve spoken kind words and reacted with a level head. I’ve not run around like a crazy woman doing too many things, yet all the things I normally do are somehow getting done, even at my slower pace. It’s like I’ve entered some kind of weird time/space dimension. I like it, and I’m trusting God is up in heaven smiling. I know Kory and Kaleb have enjoyed the “new me” as much as anyone.
This past week Kaleb turned 12. This was his first year to ever have a real birthday party on his birthday. I normally avoid that because it’s a busy time of year and getting kids together is nearly impossible, let alone adding one more thing to my to-do list, but as it worked out, he just wanted pizza and cake at a local laser tag/go-kart place and it couldn’t have been any easier. The night before, I could hardly sleep as my mind kept racing over the details and all I could come up with was that I was supposed to pick up a pizza and cake sometime before 6pm. How was that possible? What have I been doing to myself this last decade by having lavish parties that take months to plan and super human strength to execute? I’m so done with that, well, maybe.
Kaleb enjoyed his birthday on every level. He mostly loved that he was free from school for three days so he could celebrate it. On Monday we had the neighbors over for our traditional soup lunch. We are blessed to have such great neighbors. Tuesday, Grammy J took him to the Space Needle for lunch (see photo). He was a little worried about making conversation with her without us around, but he did just fine. She’s a class act and came prepared with all kinds of conversation starters. They both had a great time. And that evening was his party with his buddies (see other photo), so he made out. Two of his friends came over to spend the night so the party went right on into Wednesday as the kids played all day together. I love that about homeschooling, we can just call a day off when we want.
I’ve had the usual crazy busy weekly schedule and still managed to fit in his birthday, Christmas baking, design and print the Christmas cards, wrap gifts, write the Christmas newsletter, celebrate Christmas with my step-mom and brother and host a party for one of our home fellowship groups. I haven’t slept much, but I haven’t been stressed out either, so it’s all worked out okay.
Kory went for his treadmill test on Friday. They put the blood pressure thing on his left arm so he was unable to feel if he got any angina when he was running on the treadmill. He went way past what they expected and they said he passed with flying colors. When the technician injected him with the nuclear dye so they could photograph his heart, she made a mistake and the dye went into his tissue, not his vein, so they had to stop the whole thing and reschedule. They apologized profusely and said he wouldn’t be charged for it, so now he has to go back this Wednesday and do the whole thing over again. I haven’t seen him glowing in the dark yet so I trust their mistake wasn’t a bad one.
As I was wrapping gifts on Sunday I turned on a Canadian TV station just to have something to listen to. It was some show where people present their ideas and then a panel of rich people decide if they want to invest in them or not. I could not believe my ears when I heard a guy present his invention – and it was exactly the same as something Kaleb invented when he was eight years old! Kaleb called his the “reticulator.” He said you take a small stream of electricity, run it through some magnetic coils and the electrons would spin off and create a bigger stream of energy out the other end. We just laughed about it behind his back, but I’ll be darned if some guy didn’t make it work, get a patent for it and is now a millionaire – and it’s exactly as Kaleb had designed! I had videoed Kaleb describing it in 2008 and he has notebooks full of drawings he’s done to show his design. He wasn’t happy that someone beat him to it. Kory and I usually just roll our eyes when Kaleb goes on and on about these crazy ideas of his, but now apparently, we need to pay closer attention. Yikes.
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