IT'S SENIOR YEAR, Y'ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started the first day of my senior year of highschool today!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

Notice, I said started, not finished.

Yeah, I still have some stuff to do this evening, but the point is,  I'm on my way!! It feels soooo good to be finally on a schedule, and have the end in sight! And I have such cool courses I get to take...the first week of my Advanced American Government and Economics is spent reading St. Thomas Aquinas!!! *sighs ecstatically* MODG is so cool. :D

And really all I have to catch up on is arithmetic....before October. :P So prayers would be greatly appreciated. ;-)

But despite the crazy amount of math, I have a sneaking suspicion this year is going to be AMAZING. I'm not sure why. I suppose I'll have to wait and find out. :-)

So who else has started school yet? If not, when are you starting?

~Grace

Please pray...

Well this week went by like a run-away train! Has anyone else noticed (and been slightly unsettled by the fact) that time seems to be flying by unusually quickly? I hope it's not just me, because if this is the case, I might have bigger issues than I thought. ;-)

I finished my last day as a full-time attendant for my Down Syndrome little guy (*sniffles/sobs*), but like I said, I'll still be working as a respite-care provider for him (translated: part-time attendant). And I started working with Little Guy this past Thursday/Friday! (Sorry bud, I promise I'll come up with a better nickname for you soon). He's sooooooo sweet!!!! I'd be perfectly happy just to sit in on the couch and cuddle him for the entire time I'm over there. But I learned some therapy techniques with him, and gave him a bath and took him for a walk, and sang and read a TON of books. Nice work, if you can get it. ;-)

Some not-so-nice news we got this week concerns my other "family" -- the one I've been working for for the past three years -- and their little girl. We had been suspecting that she was somewhere on the autism spectrum for a long time now, but she was just officially diagnosed with autism this past Friday. It wasn't a huge shock, but the announcement was still hard to deal with, especially for her mom. I felt worse for her more than for the little girl, because I feel like now that we know for sure, we can start looking at ways to help her. So if y'all could say a quick prayer for her and her family as they try to figure things out, I would much appreciate it. :-)

And because I haven't practiced piano AT ALL this week, (except for at Izzy's this morning...but that wasn't really practice, since it was all "Phantom of the Opera" music..teehee!) that's what I'm going to do now. Hope y'all have a great weekend!

~Grace

I promise not to cough on you...

Sneezes, however, are an entirely different matter.

So, this weekend we've all been fighting off a cold. One of the few disadvantages to being part of a large family is the length of time it takes any illness to completely run its course. Once one of us has it, the rest of us just have to wait with bated breath (sometimes literally, in the mad hope that we don't catch it) for our turn to hog the couch all to ourselves and drink gallons of Theraflu (or peppermint tea, if you're under twelve). 

Occasionally we'll get lucky and somehow manage to get through it without it escalating to full-on-epidemic status. But not this time. Another bummer is the fact that I didn't get to start my job with Little Guy this past Thursday/Friday since he isn't able to be around any kind of cold/flu/etc. :-(

Aaaannnnndddd.........

My parents are gone. As in, not home. For the first time in our lives (well, since I was four), my parents have gone on a road-trip!!!!!!! By themselves!!!! I'm very excited for them, because they rarely get a chance to have more than forty-five minutes of uninterrupted together-ness at any given time.  And their destination is the home of my godparents, whom they haven't seen in over a year and a half. My godparents were my parents best friends in college, and somehow they've managed to stay in touch over the past twenty-odd years, despite differing lifestyles, so it's good they're having a chance to hang out with them.

However, that means I somehow have to figure out how to keep four cranky, coughing and croaking children from eating each other (or me) for the next 36 hours. So far they've been content just to lie about and watch TV/movies. So I'll probably be posting quite a few movie reviews later this week. ;-) I've had some in the works since I got back from Hannah's, though, so it'll be a bit of a movie-review-dump. I apologize. ;-) I bought the movie "Rio" to watch this evening as a surprise, but I've never seen it before, so I'm hoping it's good. It IS rated "G," which is promising in and of itself, considering most children's movies these days are a solid "PG." I'll let you know how it turns out. ;-)

Right now it sounds like "Curious George" is on, so I think I'll just go back to watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries (on YouTube: check them out if you haven't already!!!!) and drinking Theraflu. Have a good Monday!!


~Grace

For the Uninitiated...

For those of you who have not yet been introduced to the brilliant humor of Cake Wrecks, let me be the first to tell you this site is so awesomely hilarious, it's not even funny.

Wait. Never mind.

Anyways, I was flipping through their recent posts earlier, and I came across this one. I thought you "unsocialized home-schoolers" out there would be able to identify with it, especially.

Did you read it? Good. Hope you aren't (permanently) scarred. *grins maniacally*

~Grace

P.S. ....you DO realize I was kidding about the whole "scarred" thing...right? Hey! Where are you going?....