Open House and Activities in In the Meadow

Everything in our world is going fairly well. The musical that Kayla is rehearsing for will be at the beginning of March. She will be in the Hot Box Girls and Mission Band for the play Guys and Dolls. When they had the first parent meeting the teacher who runs the musical talked to me. She said that sometimes the eighth graders get speaking roles but she felt Kayla was not quite ready for it. I agreed that she is young for her age and needs some more practice. I think she is happy with it as she can continue taking dance and gymnastics class once a week and still rehearse for the play. She was a preemie and I think this contributes to her being a little less mature than some of the other kids.

Timmy and Aaron are both playing hockey. They have games once a week and practice two days a week. They are also taking martial arts lessons.

We are reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The kids like me to read the Harry Potter books aloud to them. We have been doing this since the twins were in fifth grade. We are about halfway through the book. Not sure how much longer they will want me to read out loud to them so I am trying to enjoy it while I can.

Next week is Catholic Schools Week at the kids’ school. There is an open house. The eighth graders are doing the decorating for the open house. The kids are acting as greeters who tell parents about the school. Aaron’s fifth grade class is decorating their classroom for the open house.

My mom is holding her own. I don’t know if I wrote that she has been having an issue with her head tipping over to one side. Her neurologist called me and said this is likely a side effect of some of the medication they gave her to calm her down. She is going to have a shot in her neck of something like Botox to stop the muscle spasm that is causing it. I am going with her to the appointment. I told him about some of mom’s confusion. He said they are trying to take her off some of her medications. This past week she has shown more of an interest in reading and seems to know more about the layout of the nursing home she is living in. Today one of the ladies who works at the home said she had been showing mom some pictures of famous people and mom knew who they were. Mom remembered that she met Mother Teresa when I was a preschooler. Side note: I was too young to remember this. We were on our way back from visiting my aunt where her husband was stationed in Turkey with the Air Force.

Mom is mostly aware of who everyone in our family is and seems to know who most people at the nursing home are. She gets confused on chronology sometimes and thinks she’s somewhere that she was in the past.

I have been watching a new show called Colony. I recorded it and am halfway through the second episode. It is good so far but I am not sure if the show would be sustainable long-term. We will see.