Martial Arts, Frustrations, & The Aprons and Pearls Linkup

This past week has been filled with activity and frustration.

Our second week of martial arts classes at our dojo (karate for the kids, krav maga for myself and my husband). There’s a bit of time between classes, almost too much to stay, but definitely not enough to go home. We will play around some with what we will do during that time. School work most likely once we really start, some reading of library books perhaps. If all else fails, the children love drawing, so I might just stock up on notebooks.

Krav was interesting. I am having to modify or sit out of some of the pre-defense portion of the class because it is a bunch of exercises that I can not do at the moment due to my diastasis recti (abdominal separation). I am also doing some core building exercises on my own to help with the DR.

Trying to get into better shape, but balancing it with getting enough calories to keep my milk supply up, and over tax my adrenals.

Life has been taxing enough for the adrenals!

Trying to get our religious exemptions from our children’s old doctor in time to register for school. I have been trying to get them for a month now and it has just been a nightmare. Our old doctor’s quirkiness use to be interesting, but now it is a huge source of stress. He does not have full-time office hours, so I only have certain days that I can go in. He shares an office that we have gone to, so he keeps records off site. He uses an answering service, so there is no direct calling him. You have to call and wait for him to call back.

I finally got up with him and arranged to pickup our records Friday. His office is across town, so it is a 30 minute drive. The children had lost their minds just before we left the house. We got to the office and no one was there. Call to the answering service, and waiting for him to call back.

Turns out he forgot a continuing education meeting that day and would not be in the office. He thought that when I said the 15th that I somehow meant the 15th of September (I specifically said Virginia requires the notice of intent to homeschool, along with required documents by AUGUST 15th), and we had plenty of time, so he was not bothered by urgency.

I nearly lost it. I informed him that when I first started we did have plenty of time. That I would already have to drag the children out to hand deliver it to the office because he had taken so long.

I get a twitch in my eye when I get really stressed. It has been a while since I have had one, but I got one that day.

After a stressful week, including a night of hormonal ugly crying and being physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted the next day, it was nearly the straw that broke the camel’s back.

We just had them redone. It is not hard, but still extra for me to do. We have yet to get the records. Good times.

That is all on top of juggling nursing most of the day,  getting homeschool stuff figured out, trying to get things around the room caught up on the house, and all of the other stay at home jobs.

I have plastered the house with verses on renewing my mind, putting on love and the garment of praise, and just to encourage me. Satan is great at using life to cut us down, to try to discourage us, to pile on the guilt. The Word is the best weapon we have.

We have decided on Konos for our main curriculum. We will supplement math and phonics with some other workbooks.

This past weekend we got in some good science lessons. We took a nice walk around the neighborhood at my grandma’s and while out at the park we talked about the different types of leaves that we found and found the trees that they come from, found a cicada shell (Danny loved it. For the record, I never would have picked it up before I had children!), observed how sensitive plants close up when touched, found mushrooms (and talked about how we do not eat wild mushrooms unless someone trained in identifying them has cleared them), observed gnats in spider webs (they are plentiful in that area!), talked about how acorns grow really big trees… learning does not just happen in the class room.

Tomorrow our youngest and I will be seeing a lactation consultant about his oral ties. She needs to see if she would recommend having them revised because they are affecting his nursing. I am fairly certain that they are. Once I have her recommendation the local pediatric dentist that does revisions will schedule having his ties released. Not something I am looking forward to, but if it helps him we need to have it done.

I really have had to start using a planner for appointments. We have so much going on, and it is not even autumn yet! If I do not write it down or put it in my phone I am sunk!

The Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle Sale is coming up, so stay tuned! I will be sharing more about it in the coming weeks. There are some amazing resources, as always.

I have a couple more guest posts that I will try to get up this week, then I will try to get back to posting a new post at least once a week. We will see how that goes. While blogging is my creative outlet, it is rather low priority at the moment.

Yesterday, Lillie shared a bit about her journey.

I have noticed that clicks on the linkups are down, please, I am not going to put a number of how many links you much check out, but take some time to check out the content that others are leaving. Thank you for participating!

 On to the linkup!

The Aprons & Pearls Link-up

“If you want to experience consistent victory and see it played out in the atmosphere of your home, continually look for areas in which the Holy Spirit is leading to greater obedience, and ask God what your part is in making that a reality.

Cynthia Carrier

This is a Christ-based weekly link-up to encourage others in their walks, and help Christian bloggers get their work out there.

Leave links to posts that are:

Homemaking/natural living/parenting/Christian walk related.

This could be natural living posts, recipes, cleaning, parenting, devotions, lessons, homeschool, Christian living, mentoring, modesty, gardening, homemade, diy, marriage, relationships, frugality, etc.

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• • Link directly to your post (not to your homepage).
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  • I would like to encourage you to browse through the links and take time to visit some and comment when lead.

  The link-up will run Tuesday at 6am-Sunday at 5pm. Please come back through Sunday and check out some of the posts!

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  Please note: View expressed in linkedup posts do not necessarily reflect my own, and I reserve the right to delete inappropriate posts.

  

  Now, to the link-up! Just click on the blue button below to add your link, and to check out all of the links left by others! Links are sorted randomly, so no need to worry if you join us late in the game!