The Quiet Hour is the name of a radio program we used to listen to when I was a child.  My parents listened to a lot of talk radio (Paul Harvey, anyone?) and as a result that's what I remember.  I now associate the quiet hour with Sabbath on Friday night.  It's so quiet and peaceful in the house.  Reece was asleep by 6:15.  Alicia is awake, but she is pretty calm.  Of course, there is no TV on, just music.  I was going to put on Christian, but Alicia loves to listen to classical; she associates it with the start of Sabbath.

 

It's been a pretty quiet week, actually....if you don't count all of the coughing and sniffling that went on.  Both kids were sick this week.  Reece has been mostly sick for a month.  He had bronchitis for two weeks - requiring two antibiotics - and finally became fever free on Wednesday.  I should pray that it sticks because he had been without fever the week before and it came back.  Of course, he can't go to school with a fever so Mike and I have been paying his tuition for naught.  Alicia got sick on Tuesday evening.  She didn't have school on Monday due to President's Day, went to school Tuesday and then was down for the count.   Sadly, I didn't believe her at first.  I even told her she was faking!  I mean, the girl was running around acting as if she was fine.  About 10 minutes after I said it, she threw up.  I felt so bad.  I apologized to her immediately and in her wonderful way she forgave me immediately and gave me a great big hug.  She's been sick ever since.  I tried to convince her to go to school today, but she wanted to stay home one more day.  I brought her homework from school and she jumped right in and started doing it.  I was so proud of her, I didn't have to prompt her at all.

 

Once she realized what today was, she was wishing she had gone to school.  It was visitation day.  On visitation day, all the kids get to move up a grade and experience class with next year's teacher.  She would have been in the second grade with Mrs. Rasmussen.  It's probably just as well that she didn't go; Mrs. Rasmussen would be kind of hard to handle when you aren't feeling 100%.  She's pretty strict.  Reece got to go to Kindergarten, though!  He was a little apprehensive at first, probably because he hadn't been to school in so long.  His friends were all going, though, and he knows Mrs. King pretty well since she taught Alicia last year and I consider her a friend of mine.  Thank goodness she said he was good in class!!  I was sweating it a bit!!

 

I went up and helped the other girls from home and school with the snack we were providing for all the kids.  We gave them ice cream sundaes.  Little brownies in a cup with vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup and whipped cream.  I have never scooped so much ice cream in my life!  My hands were red and sore, my thumb bruised from holding onto the edge of the big ice cream bucket.  The kids loved them, though, and the fact that so many of them actually said 'Thank you' made it worth it.  It's nice to deal with well-mannered kids.

 

Luckily I had the house pretty clean already this week and didn't have to do much today.  I just did the little bit of picking up and then I got to relax with the kids for Sabbath.

 

It's my quiet hour.

I looked in my rearview mirror this morning as I drove along one of the major roads directly after exiting the freeway.  There was a woman driving behind me without using her hands.  Why and how do I know?  Well, because her hands were otherwise occupied - braiding her hair!!  We were driving along at 40 mph and she was braiding her hair.  Little braids throughout her hair.  Eventually she changed lanes, putting her hands on the wheel, the only time I saw her do so, and passed me, pulling back into my lane a few cars up.  She was still braiding her hair.  I wanted so badly to get out of my van, knock on her window and tell her to knock that business off.  Does she not realize that she is driving a deadly weapon?  If she had had to react, she couldn't have done so quickly enough because her hands were tangled in her mess of hair.   As we neared my street, she got into the middle lane with her blinker on so that she could pull into the elementary school.   Either she had a kid in the car with her or she was headed to work.  That upset me even more because she has something to do with children.  Obviously, she isn't the sort to put them first.

 

The kicker of this story?  Her hair looked like crap either way.  She should have just worn a hat.