A few events during the week. Monday Alex saw a psychiatrist for the first time. His anxiety (sounds familiar) is not near as bad as Beth's but it's been interfering with him sleeping lately so he's going to start on a little bit of medication for it. I think it'll be good for him. He was pretty upset after the appointment though, and kind of scared about what it means for him. But Beth thinks it's going to make a big difference for him. I hope it does.....Tuesday was Beth's birthday. We did low-key. I got flowers for her and picked up pizza for the kids on the way home from work, and took Beth out for a drive and sushi, then another drive and ice cream. Just around town; I thought about trying out another restaurant outside of town that we had never been to but she was feeling like she couldn't handle it. A calm and simple evening was all she felt comfortable with.....I had lunch with Matthew (our new minister) on Wednesday at El Arrierro. He'd wanted to get together since Mom died, to see how we're doing and all, but there never was a good time during break. We had a nice visit and chat, I like him and his family a lot. We talked more about everything else going on lately than about Mom, which was fine. There's been a lot with Beth and Nat and Alex to talk about lately, and I kind of unloaded. But he's a pastor, probably used to it.....Thursday there was a meeting at the high school about the trip to Europe that Missy is going on. Just Missy now, we broke the news to Natalie this week that we are not going to send her. We'd decided it was not a good idea quite a while ago, back when we pulled her out of school in November, but we hadn't told her yet just in case we changed our minds. I'd been dreading the moment that she found out she's not going but it went much better than we were expecting: she started tearing up and shaking but then just told us that she really wanted to argue with us but she couldn't. Basically, one episode like the kind she has (still, but much less often) and they will put her on a plane home. We won't get all of the money we've paid into it back, but we will get most of it. I agreed to buy her a new phone with some of the refund money, too, that probably softened the blow.....Nat left a library book in her backpack with a leaky bottle of some smoothie or something, and the book got ruined, so I had to replace it. I got a replacement for it on Amazon, but didn't notice I was buying a softcover book, although it was used (like new). Which the library said was ok. But not being a softcover. They wouldn't take it, and then said it had to be brand new. So it's going to be $80 instead of the $40 for the Amazon book, which I've returned.....

Poor Iris is confined to indoors for a little while. She's been scrapping with one or more of the other cats (strays, or just outdoor cats, we don't know) that have been prowling the neighborhood for a while now. She lost a small chunk of her ear last fall, I think it was. But last week it seemed to be a bigger fight and she got a gouge in the same ear, and lost most of the fur on it, and it has become infected. We drained quite a bit of gross fluid out of it last Sunday and got her in to the vet on Monday. The vet told us it was a good thing we drained it, too. So Iris got an antibiotic shot and will be staying in for a while. Especially in the evening....Tuesday I stayed home from work sick. I've felt like I was coming down with something for a couple days before that but by Monday evening I was felling lousy and looked pretty peaked. Low grade fever, river of snot. I'm sure that Monday everyone around me was wishing I'd stayed home, and I obliged them on Tuesday.....Nothing much was going on all week, or weekend, especially since the weather has been so lousy (icy roads Friday night), so we decided to do something this weekend but about all we could come up with was go see "Dr. Doolittle" which was ok, but a step down for Robert Downey Jr if you ask me......

We said goodbye to Mom this weekend. During the week Laura and I picked out pictures to display, music to play in the background, and things to put out. I also realized during the middle of the week that I hadn't any idea what I was going to say, so I spent a few days writing something. It was not easy. For some reason, Dad's eulogy came easy but not Mom's. I wrote something that I'm pretty proud of, though. It was about Mom's stories (the peas, for example).....I made a judgement error in the lodging accommodations for us: I got a hotel room for both Friday night and Saturday night. In the end, maybe neither was necessary. It was nice to have the room so we could get to the funeral home in plenty of time, and we had dropped off a bunch of things for display the night before, but it could have been done from home. Regardless, we had the room for 2 nights but the weather forecast was pretty bad for Saturday night so we checked out early and swallowed the cost of the second night altogether......Anyway, on Saturday the home had everything set up very nicely, we added a bunch of photos and Mom's creations: sweaters, jackets, baby things, stitchings, etc. There was also a lovely spread of comfort food. There was a service in the chapel where Laura and I spoke, we listened to some of Mom's music, and we watched a slideshow before going to the reception room for food and visiting. I was a bit disappointed but not really surprised that only a few people showed up. Mostly it was Beth's family, Monica and Mark Nemecek, and a couple of Mom's friends. That was it. But it was a nice service, and they did a really good job with it......We packed everything up around 3 or so and headed home (bailing on the hotel).....The kids started school back up again this week. Alex and Missy are back at the high school like normal, Natalie is now attending Indiana Online Learning School. She'll be taking classes entirely online, at home. The first couple days were just getting the hang of things, I think, and she'll start in earnest on Monday. We'll see how this goes.....Beth finally got to see her psychiatrist (a cancelled appointment last week almost sent her over the edge, but they squeezed her in since it seemed an emergency) and got her meds changed. She has classic signs of side effects on what she's on now, which isn't helping her at all. Now she just has to get through a few weeks of getting off one med and onto another, again.....

The holidays seem to be over now, but they seemed to be over before they even got started. We were having a stay-cation kind of Christmas this year anyway, but Beth's anxiety has been through the roof for weeks now, Natalie's is not much better, and Mom just died. Not sure anyone really felt like it. We never even got any decorations up, except the Christmas tree, and that only days before vacation. There weren't even any ornaments on it this year. And I went in to work on Monday the 23rd, just to get a few things finished up, and stayed nearly all day. We went out to dinner on the 24th at Texas Road House with Mary Jane, had Christmas at home (Beth always wants to do a big dinner, and this year she has had no chance to, but she made a big dinner for us anyway (ham) that had us all wondering who exactly was going to eat all this food). The big ticket items this year were clothes for Natalie (almost exclusively), some video games and accessories for Alex, and some movies, a dragon puppet, and some Pop figures for Missy. I got Beth a puzzle that had too many pieces so she returned it the next day when we went to FW on the day after Christmas to return stuff; she got me some new sweatshirts that didn't fit very well so I returned those too. The kids also had some gift cards to spend at B&N or Think Geek or somewhere.....Saturday the 28th we all (except Natalie) went up to Michigan to visit family for Christmas. We thought the family gathering was at 1:00 so we were there a bit early since it started at 3. So nobody was at Stephanie's house, so we went to get pizza and came back later. It was a nice time, we had snacks and played a home version of Telestrations with a live-cast on the TV to show off the drawings. We headed back in the evening so we wouldn't be too late. Sunday Laura and Thomas (and Chloe) stopped by for a visit on their way back from Chicago. They got here in the afternoon; we all went out to a nice dinner at Boathouse and got pizza for the kids. Then we played Wizard in the evening. On Monday they came over again in the morning and Laura and I did some planning for Mom's funeral in Kalamazoo. We're looking at the 11th. They departed for home by midday......Beth and I decided that it would be easier for us to arrange the funeral if we went to the funeral home in person so we made an appointment in Kalamazoo for the next day. Alex had to work, but we all arranged for Alex and Missy to go to the Monsma's for NYE and do a sleepover. Beth and Natalie and I all headed up to Michigan again on new year's eve and face-timed with Laura as we met with the funeral directors to get everything for next weekend set up. We were back for the new year's ball drop, which we just did at home......I decided at the last minute to run the Polar Dash 4-miler again. The weather was actually pretty nice....On Thursday, I went back to work since we didn't have much going on and it seemed a waste to burn 2 vacation days this early in the year......Beth took the kids to Pottery Bayou on Friday since there wasn't much else to do.....Today we all drove up to Goshen to go to a fro-yo sundae place, because we miss having any in Warsaw.