Week 29 ~ Our Week in Numbers

Sometimes I just see our week in numbers. This is one of those weeks where we were so busy and yet it feels like less got done than usual. So welcome to our week in numbers...the 29th week of our 19th year of homeschooling.

• 356 ~ The amount of miles I drove this week between Saturday morning and Thursday night.
• 62 ~  Anne learned her solo for the Cecchetti exam this spring. It is 62 seconds long and is just one part of about an hour exam that we will travel out of state for her to take at the end of May. 
• 18 ~ My lovely daughter took 18 hours of dance or rehearsal classes this week. She started aerial arts this week in preparation for her role in Alice in Wonderland.
• 2 ~ We saw two movies this week for English class. We saw A Wrinkle in Time and Driving Miss Daisy. I really enjoyed seeing Driving Miss Daisy again, but the kids preferred going to the movies with their friends and seeing A Wrinkle in Time. 

• 7 ~ My dear husband got a new job as a GS7 at our local Veterans Hospital. He has worked  there for 10+ years and is so happy with his new job and promotion. It looks like we are  staying in this area after all.
• 16 ~ The amount of recorded lessons beyond art and dance for the week, which included math, English, earth science, history and home economics.
• 5 ~ Dean had five hours of art classes this week between Miss Laura's portrait class and with Grandma. Grandma taught us all about Wassily Kandinsky, the father of abstract. The kids did a project called Concentric Circles to learn how emotions can be expressed through the use of color.

Dean's is on the left and Anne's is on the right.

• 57 ~ I cleaned out the game shelves and got us down to 56 games. Then my friend sold me 10  Days in Africa, which I have been trying to find for a reasonable price all school year. So now we have a grand total of 57 board games!

• 4 ~ It was four years ago on Wednesday that our daughter with mental illness ran away. When she was found, it was determined that she was not safe to return to the home. For the other children's safety, she was placed in a mental health facility. She has moved through several  "mental health homes" over the years and is doing fairly well, all things considered. On the surface, things look like they are going okay, but so much of that is dependent on the support services that she receives every single minute of the day.  She has received a few more diagnoses this year which hopefully will help her maintain services when she turns 18 this Christmas. She will never be able to heal from some of her conditions. We (her parents) see her several times a month, but she hasn't seen or spoken to her siblings since that fateful night that she ran away. Everyone involved thinks that is for the best for now. The emotional trauma caused by her abuse was extreme enough to the rest of our children that they are still working through it to this day. Honestly, it was a shocking time in our lives; and we, of course, are sad that we were not able to help her have a normal life in a normal family. But we are ever so grateful that she has been in safe placements for the last four years and that the rest of us have been able to live in peace and to heal.

Blessings, Dawn