Time to catch up! It's July 29, 2019, but I'm about to document life since August 2018 in a few blog posts. I spent two semesters loaded down with a very busy college schedule. The second half of the fall semester was an equivalent to eighteen hours, since I had an eight-weeks public speaking course. I had assumed I would have to upload my speeches for the other students to watch via BlackBoard, but I learned that I would be required to find my own audiences, with specified numbers of audience members who were to be shown before and after my speeches. I had to research, prepare, and deliver six speeches in eight weeks, on top of my other twelve credit hours of college and family life. Whew! I did it, though, and kept a 4.0 that semester.
During the first part of the month, I had a weekend with William but not my other three babies. We visited Carissa's family in Oklahoma.
We visited an escape room, but we didn't quite make it. I apparently got the blame, ha!
We visited Carissa's mom and her paternal grandma and step-grandpa at her grandma's house.
And we visited Carissa's maternal grandma, where William got to pet a cow! This was my first time meeting Carissa's family, besides her mother. :-) They were all so wonderful, except for her maternal step-grandpa. He was very rude, didn't return Carissa's hugs or greetings. I immediately went to say hello and handed out my hand (after being welcomed lovingly by Carissa's grandma and hugged), and he ignored me. That moment goes down as the most awkward, embarrassing moments of my life.
He's apparently a homosexual hater. In the over a year of getting to know her, Carissa had spoken so much of her grandpa and how much she loved him and how great he was. I've since met many of Carissa's family members, and they're all so wonderful, regardless of how they view same-sex relationships. Some have made it known that they don't "believe" in them, but they certainly still treat us as well as they would otherwise. I feel very accepted and loved. For some people, love is a very conditional action, and of course it's not true love.
And my poor, polite firstborn son also went to greet the man, and he shunned William all the same. He apologized to William the next morning, but no one is so foolish as to think he did that of his own accord. Carissa's sweet grandmother (who is a Christian who believes that same-sex relationships are wrong) came to me personally, the evening before, to apologize for her husband's behavior. I can't imagine the stress she feels. She's one of the kindest, sweetest persons I know.
My sweet babies one morning we waited at the bus stop. Carissa worked at a job at this time during which she had to drop us off at the bus stop in the morning and continue on her way. I'd wait on the bus, then I'd walk home. I had walk the whole three miles round trip in the afternoons to get them.
It would be hot in the summer afternoons, so I stopped in this shady spot that comes before the bus stop and would wait.
We made a trip back home to visit friends and family. I saw my friend Gena but forgot to get a new picture with her, but here is my friend Lindsey and me.
My parents gave us some of their chickens so that we'd have chickens again. Carissa and I built a coop beforehand. William did a lot of the chicken wire installation.
William started public school for the first time. I had enrolled the others in January, but he didn't go until August after I made a big deal about it. He was living with his dad and was allowed to be truant. He said he was homeschooling with me, but how the hell was I supposed to be homeschooling my child if he rarely was in my home??? And if his residence was in the other state, the homeschooling law there differs, and it went unreported with no plan laid out, which is what the law is in Arkansas. I kept making it clear that he was either moving back full-time with me or that he'd better be enrolled in public school. So here he is on his first day at Bentonville High School. He entered a grade ahead of his peers, as a junior, despite his fooling around for a full semester and having choppy school the semester before as our lives were turned upside down.
And to end this post with something super sweet, here is my baby girl holding one of the hens.
Stay tuned for September and more.
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