What I Learned on my Summer Vacation

In honor of school starting this week, I thought I would share some lessons I learned on my summer vacation. Although most back to school essays are "What I DID on my Summer Vacation" most of you already know I spent most of it caring for sick family members or being cared for myself. These are the lessons I learned during that time.

1. I am willing to take boatloads of medicines to get better when necessary. Usually I avoid drugs and take a more natural approach, but I am thankful for modern medicine when the need is there. Our family doctor of 10 years actually said she felt like she should apologize for giving us so many prescriptions! Below is a sample of some of the meds we took over a two month period. Positive benefit (besides getting better) - we racked up lots of Kroger points at the pharmacy and saved 20 cents a gallon on 4 fill-ups :-)


2. Flowers are a balm to a sick body. They make you feel loved and cared for. They remind you of the beauty in the world outside your hospital room. Thank you Sandi and Bruce for the beautiful bouquets.

3. I recover better when I can be in the presence of my family. Smiling is good for the soul and my family makes me smile. I get joy watching Seth and Elsia toddle through the room. Random hugs as children pass by make me happy. Willa cheers me as she enters the room with exuberance to share her latest creation, song, project, finding, or joyous random dance. Olivia and Emma lift my spirits as I watch them serve our family and Bruce fills my heart just knowing he loves me unconditionally. Below - one of my heroes.

4. My plans are not God's plans. Birthday parties, tennis/swim lessons, playground visits, hospitality, school - all good plans I made, but God decided were not what we needed this summer.

5. It is possible for a garden to grow fairly well with virtually no care. By the time I was able to weed the garden, the weeds were 4 feet tall! The tomatoes, which had been planted, but not staked, survived well. The peppers, eggplant, and cabbage didn't fair so well, but may rally now that they have sunlight again. Strawberry plants, however, must be planted in order to survive.

6. The ability to hear well is a great gift not to be taken for granted. I have a new understanding after my short time of hearing loss for those who deal with it permanently.

7. I am willing to do just about anything to improve my hearing. While I was in the hospital, the ENT doctor offered to perforate my eardrums so I could maybe hear a little better (remember one had already perforated on its own and healed back up). Since I was going home the next day to a house full of people, I decided it was worth it. After the doctor numbed each eardrum, he sliced (okay, carefully made a small incision in) them and then proceeded to suction the fluid out of my inner ears. Imagine you are at the dentist and instead of suctioning the saliva from you mouth, he decides to do it through your ear. That's pretty much what it was like. Not pleasant, but in the end worth it.

8. It is a blessing to have a church family that cares for you, prays for you, and brings you meals even though we are 45 minutes away.

9. It is a blessing to have friends who will visit with you even if you are contagious. Our pastor and his family brought us food and stayed for a visit. They even accepted our invitation to stay and celebrate Willa's birthday with us. They helped make her day special and for that we are grateful. This was the day before I went into the hospital. Below is a picture of Willa with Hannah and Clare, two of the pastor's daughters.

10. It is a blessing to have homeschooling friends who come around you and offer prayers, encouragement, and lots of food. Thanks especially to Judi who took a special interest in making sure Willa had all her special food allergy needs met.

11. I'm glad I have a husband who is actively engaged with our children and enjoys playing with them even if it means he will occasionally dislocate his shoulder or have some other such injury :-) Below is a picture of the fun being had a the playground before the accident.

12. I am thankful for a mom I can call everyday just to talk about how things are going and who will patiently listen to all my ramblings and help me laugh about my day. Below is a picture of my sister, my mom, and me at my mom's birthday party about ten days after I got out of the hospital.

13. Online movie rentals are a great thing. Television, in general, is not.

14. It is not so bad to have a roommate at the hospital. It makes you come out of your cacoon and think of others. HOWEVER, when she is being prepped for a colonoscopy, it is best to use the bathroom down the hall.

15. Olivia is extremely mature and capable and handles herself well in difficult circumstances. She goes with the flow and accepts things as God brings them to us. Like needing to ride in the ambulance to the hospital with Bruce, stay with him there, go back and forth between him in the ER and me in my hospital room so I could stay updated. She did great. Here is a picture of Olivia at the Good Zoo with Elsia just before the accident.

16. Emma is a servant through and through and a great back-rubber (that was a good thing to find out !) She selflessly kept things running around here. Here is a picture of Emma in a rare moment this summer when she had a chance to sit down.

17. Willa has great empathy and is learning how to anticipate the needs of others - "Mommy, can I rub your hands for you?", "Daddy, can I unpack your suitcase?", "I put fresh flowers in the apartment for Da."

18. Elsia can learn to sleep through the night in just 5 days. This was necessary because I wasn't home to nurse her back to sleep at night. Why didn't I do this earlier?

19. You should not assume that everyone who cares for you in the hospital knows what they are doing. A four year bachelor's degree in nursing and years of experience in hospital work was a handy thing to have as a patient.

20. Simple acts of kindness make the heart glad. I am extremely thankful for my friends who brought full meals, but I am also very grateful to those who dropped off fruit, or pumpkin bread, or popsicles, or contributed money to buy groceries, or sent cards. It was all appreciated and helpful. I need to remember this when it is my turn to give rather than receive.

21. I am thankful for a mother-in-law who willingly stepped into the role of caretaker during her visit to us. It was her first chance to meet Elsia and it would have been nice to have a relaxing visit together. Instead, she accepted God's plan for this time, rolled up her sleeves, and cared for everyone while I was in the hospital. She spent lots of time doing laundry and dishes. Emma was especially thankful for the help. Thank you, Sandi!

22. Lots of fluffy pillows are a must when spending weeks in bed or on the couch.

23. I don't know scripture well enough. After 25 years of being a Christian I was saddened at my lack of knowledge. When Olivia was in the hospital I was trying to find passages that would encourage her and all I could think of the Psalm 23. I need to hide God's word in my heart so it will be there when I need it.

24. Cyberfriends are encouraging in difficult times too. Thanks Donna in Texas for all your great words of advice about my diet and for your prayers and encouragement. We also had some friends we met during the Vision Forum treasure hunt and then in Jamestown who actually called to see how Olivia was doing when they saw the post about her being in the hospital. We were very touched. Thank you Bartons!

25. I wanted to find 25 things I learned, but I think number 25 will be that thing that I still haven't learned. This will be the thing that causes God to continue to bring trying situations our way so I can learn to lean on Him more and more.

I learned a lot this summer. It all comes back to the basics. God is a good God - always. My job is to glorify Him in all that I do - always.

Guessing Game!

Hello All!

On the occasion of me leaving tonight, I would like to see how many of you think that I:

A-- Had everything packed two weeks ago

B--Had everything packed 3 days ago

C-- Packed everything yesterday

D-- Packed this afternoon

E-- Still have to pack

????? Leave your guess in a comment and I'll let you know who was right when I get back! Daddy drives us to the airport at 3 in the morning tonight! (get your head around that concept!) :-D And for all of those who have had the tact not to ask if I'll be posting while I'm gone, the answer is probably not. And for those (*cough cough* you homeschool friends, you) who have not had the tact, the answer is the same! :-)

Praying for a safe and educational trip (cause the rest of my family is starting school while I'm gone, so I have to learn something while I'm in Europe!),
~Olivia

What To Do With A Slipper:

If you remember this post and this post, you will want to know what became of the HS slipper...

This.
Yes. That is is a deer skull inside the slipper. Daddy's a genius. He needed to do something funny, and we just happened to have a skull that we had found in the woods sitting in our backyard begging for something to be done with it. You see the result.


To find out who the receiver of this gift was, please see the third picture down on this post.

Hospital Pictures!!!!!

Need I explain why I don't really want to post these? I won't, because it would show how vain and how picky I am. :-) So, realize that these are NOT the best pictures of me (and I'm already very un-photogenic)-- especially the ones in the completely ugly, unflattering hospital gown. Oh, and these are from June 2008. Bad me for not posting them sooner...

Doing a breathing treatment on my first full day in the hospital. Mommy thought it was very funny that I would every so often pick up this mirror to see how I looked.

I was very tired.

This was the IV machine that I was on for the first 2 days. Not fun, especially since I had to wheel it to the bathroom with me...
... which was quite often. You will see a few more of these pictures. Let's just say I was so bored I had nothing better to do than drink water... :-P

It was nice to be staying in one of the nation's Top 10 Hospitals for quality health care or something. (I'm just going by what the sign said.) The food providers were open 7 am- 7pm, which was nice, except when I got hungry at midnight. Thankfully I had stale pretzels left over from dinner.
Another time I ordered 12 bottles of water, salt, and pepper for lunch. :-D It had been the church's mission week so they brought us some leftover sandwiches. They just needed salt and pepper.

Another down...
Over the course of my stay there I drank something like 25 water bottles. I was there 2.5 days.

I loved it when Seth came to visit me! (He was already at the hospital for a follow-up appointment for his ear infection.) Willa also came that day and played cards with me. It was very sweet.

I was soooooooooooooo incredibly happy when we discovered the hospital had wireless internet! By Friday afternoon (about 6 hours before I was discharged) I had had my share of sitting for a month! I didn't even want to sit down while I did my breathing treatment. :-) Once again, Mommy thought that was funny.

The last picture of the bottles we took, after we threw away a few. The nurses were very impressed with my water drinking and even took me off of the sugar water IV because I was drinking so much.

Sometimes the food was good, sometimes it was bad. My last dinner, above, wasn't the greatest. My favorite thing was the personal pizza with onion on top. yummm....

I couldn't go home until my IV was finished. As soon as the machine beeped I let out a sigh of relief-- above is what I literally did, and I don't do things like raise my arm when I'm excited and stuff. But I was soooooooooo happy to go home!


I don't look very nice when I can't shower for 3 days... but I suppose most people wouldn't.

I also don't make a ton of faces, but it hurt taking the tape that held the needle in my arm off.

We had to run to Krogers to get my perscription. I sat in the car taking pictures of myself in the rearview mirror. One thing you miss while you are in a completely sterile environment is bugs. I so wanted to see a bug while I was laying in the hospital. In Kroger's parking lot was fine, though.

(Mommy wouldn't let me drive when I came home from the hospital so I wouldn't let her drive when she came home! :-) She was OK with that, though. :-))

I missed Little Girl so much while I was gone.

So there you have it. Pretty much every picture we took while I was in the hospital. Satisfied? :-)

FYI, I will be in Europe from the 25th to the 8th, which is why, unless my family decides to post while I'm gone, you won't see many more posts until at least the second week of September. And for those who want to know more about my trip:
I'll be in Paris for 3 days, drive to Amsterdam, Holland, be there for 4 days (Aunt Jill is competing in the BG World Triathlon so we're going to cheer her on), and go back to Paris for 3 or 4 days, maybe stopping in Versailles for a day. Why in the world have I been blessed with this trip? Well, from God's perspective, I have no idea. From man's, it's my 16th Birthday present.

I'm sure I'll post pictures when I get back.

She Has Saturday Morning Figured Out...

She loved carrying her bowl and cereal to her high chair this morning. And she knew to do that.

Germ-Free. Injury Prone.

It was such a joy for us to have Ruby here for 10 days! I think I'll post a few random pictures out of order and explain them so that my lazy self doesn't have to think of connecting sentences. :-P

*sniff* In the car to take Ruby to the Clarke's who would take her home. It was a sad time, so we knit washcloths. (yes, that's what homeschooling girls do instead of texting each other)


Okay, so the following two pictures have a rather interesting story behind them...

Back in April (I think) as Daddy drove Jordan and me from Teen Speak to Daughters of Dignity, we listened to "Addicted to Spuds" by Weird Al Yankovich. Inspired and with extra time after D.O.D., Jordan and I thought we should make a music video with dancing, singing potatoes. We never got around to the video part, but we did have time to dress them up.

Daddy came up with an ingenious way to make their mouths move. That's what the rubber bands are. The reason this is on here now is because I left these potatoes in my Sewing Room window for these past 5 months and they grew interesting roots :
It's rather scary, yet really cool! :-D

One thing that I always enjoy doing is photo shoots with my friends. Minutes before we hopped in the car to take Ruby to the Clarke's, Ruby snapped this picture of herself which I love:

Ruby was such a hard worker while she was here. I looked over from the sink one evening and found this:

She did a wonderful job reorganising!


Tuesday night everyone but Daddy headed up to Oglebay to walk around and watch the light/fountain/music show.

Seth REALLY wanted to go on a boat ride, and Mommy hadn't really gotten the chance to do anything fun with him this summer, so she took him on one.

She also took him to the playground while we took Elsie on a walk around an out-of-the-way pond.

It was fun to do a photo shoot by the pond with Ruby on this tree that leaned out over it.

Now, there is a bit of a story that took place after these pictures. Emma really wanted to roll down a large, grassy, deer dung-covered hill. Ruby joined her. On Emma's 2nd or 3rd roll down, she got stung by a bee on the neck, but didn't make a huge fuss about it. Ruby rolled down next to her and I decided I needed to get a group shot and so headed over to where they were. I sat down next to them, but we couldn't get all of us in the shot. Too bad.

However, as we walked on, I felt a very sharp pain on my hip-- I had felt this pain before. Once on my hand, and once on my foot. Know what it was? Yes, I was being stung on my hip. Holding Elsie, I ran to catch up with Emma and Ruby who had walked a little bit ahead with the stroller. I explained what I thought was happening and started to rub my hip. I felt a buzzing bump. The bee was still there. I shook my skirt furiously and checked my pocket for the bee, because that's where it seemed it was. While this was all happening I had felt a few more stings. Ruby was wonderful and helped my discover where this stinging bee was.

We were quite the sight. Me quite freaked out, Ruby lifting up my skirt to find the thing, and Emma holding Elsie quite freaked out as well, since she was experiencing the pain herself. Eventually we shook the thing out from between the lining of my skirt and the main part. How it got there puzzled us for a while, but then it dawned on us that maybe there had been a second bee where Emma was stung, so when I sat down, it crawled up my skirt.

I've had two bee stings in the past year, so I knew what my body's reaction to them was; swelling, itching, and redness. We walked back to the playground to let Mother know what had happened. In just that 1/4 mile walk I could feel my hip swell. It's a weird feeling.

Yes, it was painful. That was 4 days ago. The swelling is gone, the itching is tolerable, and the redness has turned to blotchyness and to what looks a little bit like a bruise. But it seems to be doing well considering I was stung 4 times by the same lousy bee.

You don't need to sympathize, reading this long explanation is enough torture.

Oh, and then today Seth stepped on a bee that was on the porch. That makes 6 stings on 3 people this week.

Last Sunday after church we drove around some back roads. The scenery was so, so, "backroadish."

Squishing into the backseat.

Saturday after the yard sale, Willa and Seth cooled off by...

... getting thoroughly soaked by 4 inches of water.

Friday night before the sale we did some yard work. Seth helped chop down weeds. He was determined to get those weeds out of there!

So that has been the past 9 days. Of course, I didn't mention the late night, early morning (not in the same length of time), and middle-of - the day Bible studies Ruby and I had while she was here, or the fact that we have successfully had Family Bible time every day except yesterday for the past (at least) 11 days! That is a very huge accomplishment. Praise God for allowing us to do that!

The present status for the Howard Household is this: Nobody is sick. Nobody has been seriously hurt for about 2 weeks. Everyone, except Mommy and Elsie, has gotten hurt minutely this week. But that's normal.

Sorry that I haven't posted much recently. I'm not sure I'll be able to post a ton until... well... about a month from now... more on that will be posted, I hope. But I will try my best not to wait too long between these very varied and factual, not emotional or educational, posts.

Wow. Almost 2 Weeks Since I Posted...

It has been a laid back and busy two weeks. We've had two more Dr.'s appointments, a hair cut for myself, and a day trip to Maryland for Mema's (my mother's mom) birthday party. After church on Sunday, Willa got to stay with our pastor's family (the Nolans) until we would return for a Bible study that evening. We picked up Ruby Hopkins at Jordan's where she and Rachel had spent the night. Ruby will be staying with us until next Wednesday. Her family was kind enough to spare her so that she could help with our get-tired-easily-recovery process. Sunday evening Ruby, Emma, and I went to a Bible study on Galatians (particularly the portion on forgiveness in Chapter 5) at the Nolans, after which we drove down the road to the putt-putt golf place. Emma and Ruby tied for 5th while I earned last place at 6th.

Monday was spent preparing for Emma's Birthday tea/ creek party. It was so much fun to decorate our porch with 32 yards of gauze in our pajama's. It was such a girly party-- at least the tea party portion. After a yummy lunch we all changed into old clothes and headed to the creek nearest our home. It is about a 1/2 mile walk. Willa and I ran that distance-- YAY me! (I got out of breath going up the stairs about two months ago).


Believe it or not, that was the Howard girl's first time to swim this summer. I'm sure you can guess why... And for me, Miss "Creeks are gross and dirty and should be avoided" it was my first time since I was ten to go all the way under water in one. It was a blast! We stopped up waterfalls, slide down them, "fought" over the boogie board and inner tubes, and played a little bit of tag under National Road.

Wednesday and Yesterday we've been doing a lot of dishes and laundry. We also made Ruby a cute black skirt using my favorite pattern. Tomorrow we are having a yard sale with two of our neighbors. Hence, today we are preparing for that. Anybody need lots of girl toys?

Beautiful Ruby after a long, hard day of cleaning, cooking, and swimming. And annoyed at me taking too many pictures. (Why does it seem everybody else get annoyed at ME for taking pictures? It's only a few.... :-))

So that's what we have been doing these past days. Today Emma was playing Duplo animals with Seth. Seth: "You have a mommy dragon?"
Emma: "No"
Seth: "Then you can make dinner by yourself?"

:-)