He got home this evening. With oxygen and with home health care checks but he's home. His oxygen is still dropping just from walking across a room but it recovers quickly now and they decided since his wife and kids are recovered from their Covid bouts he would have enough help to safely be at home.🙂. Thanks for all the prayers. Mom still not doing well. Her throat seems to be swollen from the trauma so they are not allowing anything by mouth until that resolves.

I keep getting these messages about sizes, too. I mean, what would my size have to do with me buying two men's coats in different sizes. Make the leap, Amazon, I'm buying for someone else 🤣. Also, they probably realize I am a middle-aged woman based on my history. My size is probably not relevant to the basketball leg sleeve with pad that I'm trying to purchase for my teenage son!

So, my brother is still in the hospital! Eight days so far. He cannot keep his oxygen levels at an acceptable level for discharge even with oxygen going home with him. Mom still hospitalized also. She can't swallow for some reason so there is talk of a feeding tube 🙁. Funny story:. My mom managed to drink about a fourth of a cup of tomato soup through a straw last night and my brother (the one in the same hospital) called during that time. He was jealous because he had been requesting tomato soup all last week and the hospital was out of it. He finally gave up and then finds my mom drinking tomato soup. He is almost directly below her room, two floors away. He thought maybe she could pour her leftovers out the window and he could catch them. 🤣. At least he still has his sense of humor!

Maple and caramel I tasted. No coffee. I'm absolutely sure because if it had coffee at all I would have not been able to swallow. And I liked it, so no coffee flavor is possible. I've tried to like coffee for years. Last year I had to give my favorite Contingo to my dh because he used it for coffee once and weeks later I could still taste coffee if I used it for my tea.

I think she is so mad at our aunt that she just isn't responding to anyone at the moment. I directly texted my brother a few minutes ago. He says he is doing ok, just needs to get his lungs to behave so he can get out of there. He said, "I'm two floors below mom. We're taking over the place - lol!". I was glad he had the energy to type and the energy to have some humor about the situation 🙂

And to add to the saga:. My mom fell last night. Fractured her C2 vertebrae, fractured her nose, stitches on her face. My dad wasn't home at the time so she was down for two hours before he found her. Her cell phone was being charged and she couldn't reach it. So she and my brother are now in the same hospital! She's in a neck brace for at least 12 weeks but because of her mobility issues we are hoping they send her to a rehab/ nursing home instead of back home. My dad turns 88 next week - I don't think he can handle this by himself. We shall see. No word on my brother because my sil is refusing to answer any questions about his condition. 🙁

We did our annual viewing on Wednesday night while I baked the first batch of Christmas cookies. My kids used to groan when I put it on and now even my older teens boys sit and watch.

Another update: Yesterday they tested him for going home with oxygen so they left him sitting in a chair in just the hospital gown with oxygen but his call button was nowhere near him and they left him there for two hours with no one coming back in the room. My sister-in-law finally called the nurses desk to alert them but by that time he was chilled and having a hard time breathing again which set him back (that was yesterday morning). They tried again this morning but every time they get him up and moving his oxygen levels drop too far so they are making him stay put until at least Monday. Thanks for all who are praying. This has also caused a rift in the family because of a very vocal aunt who basically called him stupid (on facebook) for not getting the vaccine. She deleted it eventually but everyone saw it. Maybe she's right and I'm wrong, but I tend to think that out of courtesy I don't need to say publicly every thought that goes through my head. Both my aunt and my sister-in-law are trying to draw people into sides over it and even though I agree with the aunt, I don't agree with the timing and public nature of it. Grrrr . . . . its just one more thing that's happening because of stupid Covid . . .there I will happily call the virus all kinds of names!

So far so good 🙂

Update:. He may be heading home today with Oxygen. He is texting me and feels a lot better. He's been getting Remesdivir but has decided no more because he struggles to breath after those doses.

My mom's Dr. Is on top of this and has told mom repeatedly that they should contact her immediately if they have any symptoms. My mom just let me know that they had to increase my brother's oxygen from 2 to 6. I not sure what that means exactly but know it's not good.

Received word yesterday that my younger brother (53) has been hospitalized with Covid. He and his wife are unvaccinated. His wife and adult son who still lives at home were the first to get sick early last week. I found out that my brother visited my elderly parents on Wednesday knowing that two people in his house had Covid! I'm trying not to be furious. And my mom's explanation when I expressed horror was, "oh, he doesn't have Covid, just a bad cold". His adult daughter who lives at home also has Covid but is fully vaccinated (she works at the hospital) and has a mild case. I'm waiting for an update this morning. When they headed to the ER his oxygen stats were at 84. At least my mom and dad were boostered about two weeks ago. Hopefully that was enough to protect them from the exposure. I'm so full of mixed feelings. .

What has happened to Fed Ex? Not that long ago, they were the most dependable delivery company in our area. I loved when a package came FedEx because I knew it would arrive on time or earlier than expected. Now they never actually get our packages to our house; they always (for at least the last four years) deliver our packages to our nextdoor neighbor's house. Always! No other delivery service has this problem.

For several years my goal has been to add diagramming in on Fridays but by the time Friday rolls around we are usually not in the mood for diagramming, especially my older two who are the ones using Fix-It - LOL!

We hosted at our house this year. A small group for our family with only 10. My in-laws, and 6 of our kids. No grandbabies as 4 are out of the country this year. My oldest dd was supposed to come but texted at the last minute that she couldn't make it. There has been some drama going in with her baby's father so I'm assuming that's the reason. We did ham and I had a good laugh at the final instructions on the packaging "Avoid overcooking to prevent burning" 🤣🤣 Sides were sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, asparagus and raisin sauce ( which I almost forgot to make!). A big bowl of fruit, blueberry cake, apple pie, coconut cream pie and pumpkin pie were on the dessert table. The day went well. I had moments of sadness missing those who weren't there. We found out that our oldest and his wife (who are out of the states for a year) are expecting baby #5 in July. Which is great news but means they will be gone longer than they planned because baby will be born there. So unless we spend thousands we don't have to travel next summer we won't meet the new baby for a while 😟.

My boys are really good at finding the different types of clauses with the subject and verbs. They never miss prepositional phrases and are really good at finding the mistakes: misused words, misspellings, tense mistakes. They really only miss things that are very unusual so in that sense, it is working. I think that Fix-It is just different from other grammar programs. It's more about sentence structure than the individual parts. So instead of asking "is that a verb?"; The question becomes is that group of words a clause?, What is the subject and verb? what kind of a clause?, does it need to be set off with commas? So it really ignores adjectives, adverbs, direct objects, etc after the first two books. My one wish is that they would add some diagramming into their system but I doubt that will happen.

My oldest two at home are in the fifth book now. It's driving me crazy . . . not a fan of Chanticleer so far but they like it and are enjoying the vocabulary. Sometimes I feel like its random and last week I just asked them if they wanted to switch to something else for grammar but they turned me down. Interested to see what the new books look like . . .

I just ordered Pandemic for our family but I think we'll play it during Thanksgiving break so it won't make it under the tree. . One of my older group played it with friends and recommended it. My two youngest and I played Labyrinth today and I realized that it has long lasting popularity around our house.

Our state and county have numbers creeping up again. I've noticed that the refrain on fb has now become that the numbers are going up because now that the kids are receiving the vaccine they are shedding virus everywhere 😟

Just read that our county is reporting 407 of 100,000 this week. We are at 53 percent fully vaccinated. I just decided to go get my booster this morning. I really don't qualify except that basketball season is starting and I'm going to be spending a lot of time in gyms with lots of people so I decided that would be high enough risk for me to justify going now for my third shot. Plus we are heading to Michigan soon for a tournament and the stories of the Michigan people here are making me feel like it's time for the booster!

Usually in our family room but we've added a few pieces of furniture this year so I'm not sure where it is going to go. We just discussed this yesterday. During the year we added three computer desks in the family room so all the kids desktops are in the public rooms (yes, each kid at home has their own so that's five computer stations and four are in one room! We are also storing a couch for one of my adult kids and the only place it could go was in our main public area. Anyway, things are crowded and that's really the only place I could possible put it as we don't have a formal living room. I do have a small cupboard in one corner so we'll probably move that somewhere else and put the tree in that corner. I love decorating for Christmas but it usually ends up driving me crazy because it makes the house feel more crowded. I'll look forward to the space again in January!

I've used motivated mom's for years. Not everything always gets done because our busy schedule but it all repeats often enough that even if it gets skipped, nothing gets really out of hand. I use the paper schedule, not the app as I tend to draw arrows or assign jobs to various kids

My best drivers are the ones who hung out the most at my dad's farm. He would do the same thing . . . I think some of my kids were behind the wheel of his pickup truck in the fields by the age of 11 or 12. That's how I learned to drive. Another thing we have finally figured out, is that my dad also has a golf cart that they wheel around the farm. My kids who have driven that a lot are better instinctual drivers. Even our riding mower helps - LOL! I think it gives them a better sense, earlier of how motor vehicles behave.

We start out in our neighborhood and then eventually get to highway and city driving. My kids play sports in a city about 30 minutes away from our house so once they can do the highway driving they get a lot of practice just in our normal routine. None have gone for their license until they were eighteen mostly because I don't want to pay insurance rates for teenage boys. Be sure they usually get their permits by sixteen they end up with a lot of driving time before the license. Now I'll tell you about my current 18yods who got his permit at 16 but about two weeks later declared that I "yelled" at him when he was driving in a parking lot. (He was cutting across parking spots in a mostly empty lot and I told him to stop so I could give him some instruction about staying in your lane even in a parking lot). He decided at that point that he wouldn't drive with me any more so he is now 18 with no permit, license or driving experience. About two weeks before his 18th birthday he casually mentioned that he was excited that he would be able to get his license on his birthday! -lol! I explained that he could do what he wanted regarding that but that I didn't allow drivers with no experience to drive my cars. Not sure what his plan is now -lol!

Have you checked your libraries. Ohio has a program that is supplying libraries with Covid tests that are distributed free for the asking. At least I thought it was a state program - maybe I'm mistaken and it is at the county level? Our family has taken advantage of this several times.