Summer Is So Close You Can Almost Taste It!

The girls have just a few more hours of school.   Can you believe that?!   I cannot believe how fast the year has gone by!  Rachel finally made it back to school this week.  She missed about two weeks of school in the last month and was out every day last week.  She missed speech therapy and gymnastics twice and horseback riding once.  She went to the doctor three times and is now on Claritin, steroid nasal spray and her third round of antibiotics!!  For the last couple of days her snotty nose has finally seemed to get better, thank goodness!  I hope she stays good though, because I forgot to give her her meds before she left for school this morning........loser mom,I know!

And speaking of antibiotics......the guinea pigs seem to be doing okay.  Nip had surgery for the swollen gland in his neck and one week post op, he had another one enlarged!  This time the vet put him on antibiotics, so I now can add guinea pig medicator to my resume!  Who knew you could give guinea pigs meds?  After a week of antibiotics he seems much better.  I think the lump is pretty much gone now, but it is hard to say for sure because of the the healing incision from the surgery!! Now I am wondering............why we did surgery on the first lump!  It would have been so much cheaper to go with the antibiotics in the first place!! 

Last Friday we got one of our final views of a shuttle launch.  The shuttle program is supposed to come to an end this year and there are only two or three more launches left.  It will be sad to see it go.  It is a neat feeling to stand out in the backyard and watch seven astronauts being lifted into space! 

Space Shuttle Atlantis as seen from the backyard on Friday, May 14th

On Monday, we did Rachel's IEP for next year.  I actually got a person from the school board to come in and help us assign Rachel to the appropriate classroom setting.  This person is an inclusion specialist, and she really pushes the schools to include children with special needs.  After two and a half hours, we walked away with, what I think is, a pretty good plan.  Rachel will still not be totally included in a regular classroom, but she will be in a regular class about 50% of the time.  She has just done so well with her academic stuff this year that I did not want to lose that just to get her interacting with her peers in a social setting.  I figure being in the classroom 50% of the time will give her plenty of opportunities for social interaction and the 3:1 ration of kids:teachers in the self contained classroom will keep her moving forward in her academics.  One of the reasons she ended up staying in the self contained classroom is because I pushed for (and got) more speech therapy.  The increased time with speech takes away from the time she could be in the regular classroom, but Rachel needs all the help she can get with speech!    

This Saturday we are leaving for a couple of days in the Keys.  We will be camping, so I am not as excited about it as Mike and the girls are, but I do love being in the Keys.  We will be taking the kayaks this time, so hopefully we bet to see some really cool stuff!  I hope the oil from the destroyed rig in the Gulf of Mexico does not cause any problems!  That is such a sad situation!  There is no telling how many animals will die in this fiasco and how many local fishermen will be put out of business.

A couple of blogs that I have been following have lost their precious children in the last week.  One, an 18 year old with bone cancer and the other a four year old adopted into her forever family in October from Serbia who died from complications of open heart surgery.  When reading both of these blogs, one is taken by how strong the faith is in both these families.  They encourage me to be stronger in my faith.  These tragic stories serve to remind me how blessed I am to have healthy children.  I hope to be able to take some lessons from these blogs and learn how to be thankful for what I have.  When the kids are driving me crazy with the "I Want-itis"  and the "She Hit Me First Disease,"  I want to remember how lucky I am to have them, nasty habits and all!  Thanks to all of you out there who share your stories of your children in this blogging community.  I think I have learned more about parenting in this blogsphere than I ever learned from reading a book!  I am sending prayers out to these families for comfort in the days and months to come.

And now..........let the summer begin!