The Good News

I'm speeding through these spring months, because there was such a story to tell, so one more long post here!

 This was one of the lighter things the boys had to tote up the driveway!

 Keeping on with the spring progress, we bought special low-chemical leaching water supply pipes for the house. The house was now planned to be as anti-cancer as we could make it, choosing materials that were as harmless as we can get them (it was about as easy as finding all-organic food not packaged in plastic).

We kept up with school as best we could. Here you see a display of specimens for nature study.  One son did family presentations, learning to use power point, and organizing the other children to do presentations of their own. He also made a new math curriculum that wasn't boring (something to do with turning it into a story: voyages by explorers in the arctic sea and calculating supplies needed, ballast, etc.) One son learned to program computers. When he was told that Artificial Intelligence will eliminate the need for computer programmers, he  responded that he will be a programming historical reenactor! Overall, though, the big high school education was "shop class" and building a house.

 

Like my writing, the laundry must go on, and on, and on...

 My husband had surgery for real mid-spring, with the surgeon bringing me the news out of the operating room that now he was confident there was a very small chance of cancer. It was a cyst! A cyst that contains cells that are usually cancerous, but in this case, benign. We were HUGELY relieved, as you can imagine. The last word was with the pathologist though, and he was taking his time.

view from one side of the canyon to the other side

The surgeon specialist was excellent. So excellent, that my husband felt such little pain in recovery, he would not take any medications. The surgeon did such a precise job-must not have touched a nerve!- and my husband felt so good, he refused to sit around and be nursed. Instead he took the kids on a hike way up the high canyon the third hill behind our house. I couldn't stop him! I stayed home, and was glad I did because they saw a rattlesnake along the way. 

We chose to believe the surgeon, who was quite confident about his guess, and the relief of the end of the whole ordeal gave quite a boost to house-building. The last bit of exterior framing was finished, we hired a builder for a bit of inside work, we hired an electrician! The plumbing got started, and the Kitchen was plumbed!

 The first door was installed-- a side exterior door. No, we didn't make this one because the opening was standard on the side, but we did find a very nice one to buy, don't you think?

We had one more surprise-- which really should have been expected-- and that was that we could not rent the RV forever! The owners needed it back... so we were making inquiries for another RV to rent, and packing up our items in totes.

In the end, the pathologist came to the same conclusion the surgeon did. The several months we spent with possible cancer in the horizon permanently changed our way of living.

Aquatherm polypropylene pipes, usually used in industrial applications, were chosen because of its lower chemical leaching.

My husband had picked “hope” as a theme word for that year. I now think that picking a theme word of the year is akin to praying for patience! I think a phrase would have been better– something like “expect the unexpected.” There did come a point in all this, whenever the next shock came like another wave to crash our boat, that I had to laugh. How much more could there be? I am now very appreciative for the uneventful days in life. All I wanted to worry about that upcoming summer was keeping the freezer full of popsicles for the kids...

 

[*I have had Rod and Staff math for them for years, they all dislike it but they all have their math facts down. However they have taken turns trying to write their own, that's how frustrated they have been with the experience of a text book. I still persist with R&S though because it's works. I'm sure they wouldn't like any math out of any book anyway!]