New Doctor, Cancer and Thanksgiving

Today is the day before Thanksgiving. Our day starts out, as usual, with the fight to get Grandma to eat breakfast. We will be following that with the argument about going to the doctor, the lecture about NOT going into the hospital and a discussion about whether there is time for a nap before we go. The boys will watch TV, eat breakfast and do their morning chores. Once this phase is done we move to phase II.

Phase II is schoolwork for the boys and the new doctor for Grandma and I. Grandma is seeing a new gastroenterologist today. The primary care doctor suspects that her rapid weight loss and constipation is due to colon cancer. I am not sure what we are willing to go through at this point for testing, since we probably would not subject her to any surgery or other invasive procedures, unless they were for comfort purposes. Makes this visit a crappy one for me to deal with, but it needs to be done.

Schoolwork is going well for both boys, finally. Josh is cruising along in Margaret Lial's Prealgebra and Introductory Algebra course without much trouble, managing to read about 4 chapters a day in Joy Hakim's A History of US, and doing at least one lesson in Hake's Grammar and Writing. He has also begun a story with a Star Wars theme, looks promising.
Max is doing well with the switch from Saxon to Horizons Math. I ordered GUM for him today as a language arts program, since nothing we have tried yet seems to work very well. He is reading History, Geography and World History every day in What Your 4th Grader Needs to Know by Hirsch and listening to SOTW 2 twice a week. Science lessons for both are through Dominic Crea's classes. Josh is taking High School Chemistry and Max is doing a General Science class.

Phase III of our day is after we get back from the doctor visit. We are having Thanksgiving with our extended family at a buffet held at a golf course near our home. We decided that after we eat dinner, we will all come over to our house for coffee, pie and football, card games and just plain relaxing. There will be 21 of us!! This makes my afternoon a little hectic with cleaning, cooking, laundry and set up. I enjoy having people over and enjoy having my house clean even more, so it will be worth the effort.

Kate comes home today for a visit. She is staying until Monday morning and the boys, particularly Max, are really excited. It will be nice to see her again.