Friday, August 25, 2017

News from the Week

It seems I quit blogging when Maria left! LOL  Seriously the last 11 days have proven to be busy. I don't think I can get the WHOLE time documented in one post - so I'll get started with this one and see where we end.

I spent two full days at IDEA - the state homeschool program we decided to join. I gleaned helpful information and feel like I'm getting a grasp on what we need to get done in the upcoming year. If I hadn't joined them, I'm not sure I would have taken the time to get school started. LOL

I found two women to talk all things homesteading with....gardening, goats, rabbits, πŸ“πŸ”πŸ“.

After the orientation, and 3 1/2 hour meeting with my contact teacher, I spent a couple of days wrestling up finished ILP (Individual Learning Plans) for the three Gherkins. The difficult part of this was taking what we DO and labeling it to fit the right boxes for the program. They have a limited number of course titles one can use.

Michael had a CPAP appointment. While there we discussed the fact we've not been able to find a Motion Disorder Specialist and we were going to have to fly outside every 6 months for Michael to get care. It turns out the doc, who spends one day a week helping out with the sleep disorder clinic at the VA, is a board certified Motion Disorder specialist who LIVES in Anchorage, has been the assistant at the VA Parkinsons Research clinic in San Francisco, trained at Mayo, has written research grants....the list goes on.   The VA insisted there were NO specialists in this field in Alaska,and then booked an appointment for Michael with one on a different matter. 🐽 It's a God thing we brought up Parkinsons at the appointment. We went to the referral office and found the reason we've not heard from them is they forgot about Michael. We have names and numbers to call to get a referral to this local doc.

That same day we spent hours tracking down the stuff needed to replace my lost ID. 😟

Michael visited three banks trying to set up a special needs trust for his oldest sister. Finally found one who knew the regs.

We had a plumber come out (twice) to make sure the water heated floors were winter ready.

We had an appliance repairman come out to work on the upstairs stove/oven.  I will admit it frustrates me  we had the home inspected and the owners said things were in, "working order," when two of the burners won't even ignite and the oven doesn't work.  We know they KNEW as we found the knob and the drawer under the oven held on with DUCT TAPE. 🐽 We've fixed one burner that wasn't starting downstairs and need them to look at the oven....but the warranty company won't work on it until this one is done. ??? Turns out the upstairs oven needs over $700 in repairs.....then the warranty office called to say they wouldn't fix the knob or the hinge (which is sprung). They wanted us to pay the repairman $267 for a knob and a hinge. I told them that wasn't happening and we'd find the parts and fix it ourselves.

The boys began this year's Japanese study with Kim. Stacia is taking weekly online lessons too.

That summarizes the  week......