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The Good, the Sad, and the Ugly

    We’ll start with the good, yes?

    We’ve entered full on Spring here (finally!).  I’ve been enlisting the help of the whole family to try to get some of our gardens in order.  Spring chores are always much easier when we spend time cleaning things up in the Autumn, but this past year we were so busy that I didn’t have time to get things tucked away.  Rather than being completely overwhelmed with it all, we’re working on one section at a time, cleaning and clearing and raking trimming as we go.  I’ll need to tackle some rearranging and replanting later, but just getting the beds cleaned up is the first job and we’re nearly done.  It goes so much faster with many hands pitching in to help.

    The sad – last week my paternal Grandmom passed away.  We only just said goodbye to my grandfather on my mom’s side last month.  My Grandmom, nicknamed Cass, was such a wonderful person.  My grandfather, her husband, died 16 years ago, and she had been missing him for all those years.  She died late at night just before the day of his birthday, so she joined him in heaven as his birthday gift. I’m sad she’s gone, sadder still that I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time with her.

    My Grandmom is one of the reasons why we have seven children.  On the day of her 83rd birthday, I called to wish her a happy day, and my husband prompted me to ask her for wisdom – to tell us what, if anything, she wished she could change.  She said the only thing she wished she could change was to have more children.  She had two, and loved them very much, but she said she wished she had more.  Let me tell you, I didn’t want to be 83 and wishing I had more children! We only had four at the time, but every time I told her I was expecting another baby, she just giggled with joy.  Oh, how I loved her!  I knew she wasn’t well for a long time, and she didn’t remember who I was the last year or two, but I’m really having a harder time coming to terms with her passing than I thought I would.  Maybe I’ll share a story about her here from time to time.

    And now we’ve come to the ugly.  My oldest son graduated from high school in 2011.  He homeschooled for 9th and 10th grade, attended a private school for 11th grade, and attended the private school part time his senior year.  He graduated from the private school, which has since closed, and attended an unaccredited program for two years.  As part of his application to the post high school program, we provided all his high school records.  The private school was keeping all his high school records.  We provided all our homeschooling records to the school for tracking and record keeping.  My oldest son is now thinking of furthering his education and needs a copy of his high school transcript.   Guess what?  No one has it!  Our computer crashed a few years ago and when we were recovering information we didn’t focus on documents, mostly photos and videos.  I wasn’t concerned because the school had our son’s high school documentation.  Remember I mentioned that the private school closed?  They sent all their records to the town office.  The only records that can be found for my son is his 11th grade work.  The post high school program that had copies of everything? Well, his first year there was the year they were working on digitizing everything.  So they had scanned in all the records, but because it was a new process, some of the information was lost, including my son’s high school transcript copy.  So, now I’m spending time with old calendars, old books, old notes, and lots and LOTS of coffee while I try to recreate my son’s high school career.  We’re talking the fall of 2007 – 2011.  Now that’s ugly.  Wish me luck!

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    2 thoughts on “The Good, the Sad, and the Ugly”

    1. I’m sorry for your loss, but oh how your story of her delight in you having more children, made me smile! My grandma was the oldest of 9 kids, had only one (my mom) and was not thrilled by me having more and more. She did love them so, and she was especially close to my youngest daughter. I told her one day that God might have given me Sarah just for her sake. She looked surprised, but I think that gave her something to think about!

      I’m so sorry about your sons transcript being lost! I hope you can quickly pull everything together!

    2. Thank you, Deanna.

      My son and I made a few notes so hopefully it won’t be too difficult to put together, though I do keep putting it off and really need to just get it done.

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