As the School Year Winds Down. . .

A number of things we've been working with:

Break-ins in our subdivision. Last night as we were at Mass preparing for communion, one of my sons leaned over and suggested we leave straight away after communicating, for the sake of the house. We weren't a mile from the church when a friend of his called his cell phone, saying he had just chased the Person-of-Interest from our property. There have been six break-ins in the last few months, and four took place two week-ends ago. One happened at a cop's house.

On a lighter note, 0ur school year is winding down, and my Aspie son had a great IEP review. He has made tremendous progress this year. I hope we can get his other needs addressed this summer. After the start of the next school year, we will be attending six counseling sessions at TEACCH, which is where he and I both were diagnosed as Aspergers Autistics.

Both boys have concluded that they wish to be engineers. I am encouraging the civil branch, as that has more opportunity in more places. Our school system has career tracks, so both will be pursuing the engineering track. Both boys are gifted with doing algebra in their heads.

The recession has taken its toll on hubby's job. He had his pay docked 10 percent, and is home every other Friday until further notice. He will be proctoring End-Of-Course exams at our high school this Friday. One of our sons will get extra credit for it.

Our summer will be taken up with driver's ed again, only for my youngest son.

Part of being a lay hermit is learning how to keep peace within one's heart while moving through life and adversity. We are all so used to our own spaces, but an occasional meal together at a fast food restaurant is essential to family unity. I'd use my own dining room table, but it was turned into my Aspie son's workbench for his Fundamentals of Technology class. Another thing we can work on over the summer--family meals at the table again!

And speaking of food, I would highly recommend everyone start storing up food. I usually take doomsday warnings on TV with a grain of salt, but I did receive in prayer this week that I needed to start laying in provisions, and therefore I pass the information on to you.

Blessings,
Gemma