From Higher Education to the ER

I'll cover it all in this post!

Our oldest daughter is finally going to be starting her higher education in the morning! Working out a life-plan with her has been challenging. What do you DO when you still live at home and yet haven't started school yet? What about a job? A job with enough flexibility to allow you the time to study and be with your family?

What she's been doing, while she waited to start school, is a lot of housework. Not sure she'll look back on it as the most fun chapter of her life, but it sure has been a huge help to me!

So we think we have a plan worked out for that now...and a lot of my friends will be quite happy with it, I believe. She's excited, I'm excited, Dad's excited. So I feel like we finally have her starting on the right path.

I'm glad she's still home anyway because over the weekend I was ironing a pile of Steve's dress shirts and it occurred to me that she doesn't know how to iron a man's dress shirt. I taught her to iron many years ago, but it hasn't been practiced enough. Also what if one day she is married and her husband needs his shirts ironed? (I know a ton of people who just send everything to the cleaners but that isn't always in the budget!)

So she learned to do that. And it's just nice that she's still here and there is still time to teach her little things like that for adulthood.

We have another field trip this week. I'm so happy that we are getting to go on field trips again after several years of not really going on many (because oldest needed to finish school and also we had a lot of therapy and tutoring appointments). However, it stresses me out a little to see another day of school not getting done. Last week's field trip was at least educational, but this week's is pretty much just fun. That's OK. There will be other days to do book work, right?

My oldest sister has been taking my oldest daughter on Friday night fun nights for awhile now. They will go get some food that we normally cannot have due to food allergies, and then watch a movie that we can't watch around here because of little eyes and ears. It's nice for her to get to go do something "big" and stay out late. So this last Friday night, sister picked up the 2nd born for her turn. And now this coming Friday, she is planning a daytime fun day for the youngest. She's a good aunt.
They feel special getting to do something by themselves.

Brave Aunt T and 2nd born at her birthday last year. 

So while 2nd born was out with her aunt, the rest of us RAN NOT WALKED to Whataburger and ate. Whataburger has soy in pretty much everything except their drinks and ketchup packets. So we never get to eat there anymore. It was so cheap! It made me realize how when we do go out, it costs so much more than other families because we have to choose allergy-friendly places and make substitutions that cost more. Food allergies stink.

Steve in the ER last year. I'll spare you his face. He looked miserable. 

Speaking of food allergies, one year ago yesterday we found out that my husband also suddenly had food allergies. We found out through the fun of anaphylaxis. It was an hours-long ordeal and it took us way too long to figure out what was going on. In the end, he ended up taking a ride in the ambulance.

A picture of his side showing the hives he broke out in once he arrived at the ER. 

After seeing that anaphylaxis is a very scary beast, we got Epi-Pens for both he and our 2nd born. She had been diagnosed 2 years prior, but we were under the (very mistaken) belief that her allergies "weren't that bad" and no doctor even offered an Epi-Pen nor suggested that we needed one. We are wiser today and they carry them everywhere they go.

Which is why, tonight, I made banana bread from scratch. Daughter wanted something sweet and it's so nice to know exactly what's in the food because I made it. Actually, it's on my weight loss plan, which isn't actually going very well. But I have lost 2 pounds in a month or so....so there's that.

Signing off,