It sure is Silly Season here at our place. We’re heading off tomorrow to visit with my Dad and I have several loads of laundry to do, the car needs to be cleaned, as does the house and in all that some people still want to be fed! Ha, they’ve got buckley’s!

We get home for a week and then we’re off to Melbourne for a week’s worth of National Softball. Acckkk I can hardly wait, it’s so exciting.

Oh, did I forget to mention that we have ‘suspected’ whooping cough in our home? Yup! Miss R’s *friend* had a terrible cough for several weeks and was quite ill. Eventually he was diagnosed as having whooping cough. within the week, Master J started coughing and felt quite ill as did Miss R. So they have been quarantined at home. The rest of us have tried to stay at home as much as possible so as not to spread the nasty bug. The two sickies started on a course of antibiotics which doesn’t reduce their infection levels rather it reduces the amount of days that they are contagious.

In the meanwhile I have been dosing Master C and Miss A up on a whole range of healthies like:

  • General teen multi vitamin
  • Zinc supplements
  • AstraForte mixed with Grape juice. AstraForte is a special preparation of traditional oriental herbs to support the immune system and to help restore good health.
  • Yakult, which is a fermented milk drink that contains a very high concentration of a unique, beneficial bacterium called Lactobacillus casei Shirota strain.
  • Vit B12 supplements and
  • Loads of water, daily sunshine and fresh air with a good combination of rest and exercise.

The mother of Miss R’s ‘friend’ is a pharmacist. I think she might believe I’m either a counter culture hippie or a witch! LOL Obviously, being a pharmacist, she advocates many medicines and vaccines. Well, we don’t do vaccinations! Tehee, I wonder what she makes of that! Don’t do school, don’t vaccinate, what next??? I just found it ironic that so far, only 2 of our unvaccinated children have caught the ‘cough’ from a fully immunised child!!!! And whilst they have a cough, they aren’t overly ill with it at all…but it’s still a good practice to quarantine them to prevent the spread. Ah well…I think she believes me (although doesn’t agree) when I tell her that our decision to not vaccinate is not based on laziness rather, what we feel is, an informed, conscious decision. Same with homeschooling.

In term 4, the local public school teachers had gone on strike for some half days. This meant that school was between 12noon and 3.15pm. Of course, this mucked many working parents around so they simply made alternative arrnagments for their children and they didn’t attend school on those days. The teachers knew this would happen and thus prepared no lesson activities other than yard work or busy table work. I simply didn’t see the point in Miss R attending on those days. not everyone agrees with me and it has even been said that

“maybe you need to take education more seriously”.

LOLOLOLOL…oh dear, I had a hard time keeping silent on that one! but I did manage to simply smile and gently reply,

“Oh, we do take education very seriously in our home.”

and left it at that. Do people really believe that we just yanked our children out of school to let them run wild? Maybe because we were too lazy to be good parents? Wow! I don’t know of many homeschool parents like that…not any actually but I’m sure there may be some people like that. I just haven’t met any. Anyway, enough rant…it’s a long way down from that soapbox!

So another year of blogging has come and gone…I’ll be back next year sometimes, probably, possibly. I hope that my friends (both online and IRL) and blog readers have a blessed and safe time over the holiday period.

In His Grace,