Hit the wall
Yep, yesterday I finally hit the wall and spent the day in bed. I knew it was coming, all the signs & symptoms had been there, but I decided to ignore them. Ignoring them doesn’t work and so now I’m going to have to recover.
Fri – In the afternoon, we went and helped with the set-up for EnviroFest. Lots of moving of tables, heavy lifting, etc. I was glad I was there helping, but man did I hurt. I had already had muscle and joint pain and weakness, but I tried to not it affect me. Tyler was great and helped out lots.
Sat – EnviroFest. I went early to help with set-up and then I volunteered for stations for a few hours. It rained and there wasn’t a very good turn out while I was there. It was too bad since there were a lot of awesome things this year. Then we came home and I rested.
Sun – We decided to stay home and do chores around here. Tyler picked up sticks and clipped the grass around the fence. Trent & I fixed a couple sprinkler heads that weren’t working. Then he started cleaning out and filling the cracks in the sidewalk and driveway. He made lots of ants very mad. I was doing laundry and supervising Tyler. We basically wore ourselves out. Tyler also started one of his new chores – emptying the dishwasher and putting everything away. He can’t reach everything yet so I’m still helping, but he’s been doing a good job. It was interesting to learn that he thought we ran the dishwasher once a week and in reality we run it almost every day. Seriously, we eat 3 meals a day at home (except Trent doesn’t come home from lunch) and snacks and we cook our own food – makes a lot of dishes.
Mon – Tyler had Science Sleuths. It was about turtles. Can’t say that he really learned anything new, but it was good for him to get out and socialize. I stayed around because Science Sleuths is usually just homeschool kids, but now that it is summer time there were lots of kids there. I liked it better when it was just homeschool kids, but that’s because I like the smaller groups. Anyways, Krista was going to let all the kids handle the turtles and with 20 kids, it seemed like a little much for her keeping track of all the turtles and make sure they didn’t get dropped. A little into the program, Krista thanked me for staying and helping because most of the kids didn’t listen to the instructions of how to handle the turtles so there were lots of issues. We got to hold a baby snapping turtle, painted turtles, red-eared sliders and a box turtle. We got to see a big snapping turtle, but she’s still learning to be handled and doesn’t always cooperate so we had to be careful with her. I got to meet a new homeschooling mom. She’s very nice and I look forward to seeing her at future activities. Then Tyler had a slight issue because Krista feed the box turtle so they could see it eat and Tyler couldn’t see it because all the other kids got way too close and were blocking. Also he was pushed out of the way and when he asked one of the kids to move over a little so he could see, he got shoved again. So he came over to me upset. It isn’t like he hasn’t seen a turtle eat before, but I think his feelings got hurt. Luckily, the next activity was taking a quick walk down to the river to see if we could see any turtles. We spotted some on the other side of the river sunning themselves. The maintenance guys found a map turtle and were going to take it back to the shelter for us to look at after our walk, but then one of the kids spotted one. They are up on land right now to lay their eggs. So Krista took it back thinking that the maintenance guys had left it there instead. Turns out that now they had 2 map turtles and they only need one for the fair exhibit next month. So I volunteered Tyler & I to take one of the map turtles back to where we found them. Tyler was glad that he got to get up close to a map turtle. She was very docile and not a problem to carry at all. When we got back, we helped Krista pack up everything so that meant Tyler got a little extra time with the turtles. He’s like his mom – he loves wildlife.
Tyler also had TKD and then after dinner he had to empty the dishwasher again. He isn’t sure that he likes doing it. But we did talk about how he’s going to be getting some new chores coming up. He is going to start helping mow the yard. We’re pretty sure that he’s big enough and it is a self-propelled mower. Not the whole yard, but about 1/2 of the back yard after Trent has done the outline. Then the next one is going to be learning to do his laundry. Right now he puts it away and makes his bed, but it’s time for him to learn sorting and running the washing machine. Not sure how I’m going to get him to hang the laundry on the line instead of using the dryer, but I’m thinking one of our step stools is tall enough for him to use. We’ll have to see. He’s really sure that he doesn’t want to do all that, but he’s going to have to learn it sooner or later because I’m not taking care of him forever. And as he gets older, he can contribute to the household more.
Tues – We had a mostly quiet day since I spent most of it in bed. But Tyler did work on his 4-H projects and record keeping. He has to show those things to his leader next week so she can sign off on them and give us our tickets to the fair. They aren’t due until 7/13, but we are not waiting until the last minute. He only has a few more steps on his model and a few on his rocket. Then we’ll have to figure out how we are going to display both of them. Then onto the fishing club poster. He hasn’t started it, but we don’t have to show that one to the fishing club leader for a few more weeks. So we have some time, but not much.
We have a family reunion this weekend and the Pumpkinvine Bike Ride on Sat. It’s been raining, but I hope the rain holds off for our 15 mile ride on Sat.
