Elena 
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My sister had been telling me about how much she loved the Home Goods Store, so I went shopping there and found this beautiful wreath to decorate for Advent. I thought it would give the Advent wreath some beauty and color, and then after Advent, I could hang it on the door for Christmas.
One night after dinner, when we had all the candles lit, I told the family I was going downstairs to watch something on TV. Mr. Pete, Izzy, and Noah, as well as Rosie, were all still at the table and I felt safe leaving the advent wreath in the presence of three adults and a responsible 8th grader.
I was down there for about an hour and when I came up there was a strange smell in the air and everyone was looking kind of sheepish. Apparently, they all retired to the living room with their various devices and just let the candles keep burning. Suddenly, WHOOSH! The flames got kind of high and the whole side of the wreath caught flame. Mr. Pete quickly got the fire out. I guess they had a “Don’t tell Mom – let’s see if she notices” kind of attitude.
Although, I’m not sure how they thought I would miss this!
On the plus side, I replaced it with this wreath. I saw it in November and fell in love with it, but I wasn’t willing to pay $70 for it. The last week of Advent it was down to $12, so I’m glad I waited!
My brother-in-law was diagnosed with a glioma a few months ago. I blogged about that here. For Christmas, he sent all of his brothers a T-shirt with his CT scan on it.
Mr. Pete proudly wore it to cantor at church last weekend.
What I love about this family – a sense of humor in the face of a difficult situation.
3. Last spring I gave Rosie the California Achievement test. She surprised me with scoring in the 99th percentile for math.
That’s right … 99th percentile!
So when we were planning for this school year, we decided to put her directly into Algebra 1. She’s been doing her daily work and getting maybe one or two problems wrong a day, but she always understands what she did and why she got it wrong.
During the break, I gave her a test and had Noah check it – the results were not great. It seems that although Rosie CAN do Algebra 1 work, it would probably be more beneficial to go back and do some pre-Algebra.
Rosie was upset about it at first, but I told her that she had the choice between being an A pre-algebra student or a B – C Algebra 1 student, and that made her consider that maybe that was the right move. So next week, we are starting back around lesson 40 of Saxon pre-algebra. I think that will give her a firmer foundation for starting out in Algebra 1 again next year. There’s nothing wrong with firming up the fundamentals in something like math!
February 2 is Candlemas.There is a tradition of finally taking the Christmas greenery down to burn on Candlemas because it would have sufficiently dried out by then.
So I am keeping two garlands up, the red tablecloth with the Christmas Cards, and maybe the Santa pictures of the kids for a bit longer. I’ll take them down a little at a time until it’s all changed over by Candlemas. Luckily, Lent is a little later this year!
It’s also been really helpful. 18 months ago I lost my last job as a medical transcriptionist because my client had to move to the hospital’s electronic medical record. It was hard giving up something that I had done for so many years.
Transcribing for Rev is like medical transcription – only better. I can pick and choose when to work, and what jobs I want to do. The money ends up in my Paypal account and I can transfer it right into my bank.
I thought then that I would really, really try harder to make blogging more profitable. Let me tell you folks, I really think that the only people who make a lot of money blogging, are people blogging about making a lot of money. I’ll make enough to report for taxes, but not really enough to cover my daughter’s expenses and other bills. This is where working for Rev will help.
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