It's been nearly a month since I returned home and made my last post on here. Since then we've spent a lot of time trying to settle in to a normal routine.. getting there slowly! The little guys & I have spent time in the garden planting new veggies (when it hasn't been pissing down rain anyway) and we had a great combination Frodos' birthday/Australia day bbq at the IL's house complete with sack races & egg & spoon races hehehe.

Jonathan is doing SO much better now. I've been updating HIS site, but have forgotten to update here (www.caringbridge.org/visit/jonathanbuckhalter ) He's moved to the best rehab hospital pretty much in the US, he's trache free, talking (able to answer his own phone now yay!) and walking a bit with therapy. The walking is painful for him though, they took the casts off both his legs in the last couple of days and he's really feeling it poor guy :( He wants OUT of that wheelchair though so he's soldiering on! I call & talk to him EVERY day... we sorta run out of things to say but I talk to him about anything & everything and he appreciates the company immensely. He's so bored and lonely and can't wait until he's able to go home.

Back here at home, we're attempting to get our year of homeschooling up and running. We're using a school of distance ed this year.. it's a bit different than typical ones though, as there is no prescribed curriculum. It uses an 'outcomes based' approach and basically we are free to choose whatever programs (or indeed even none at all!) to use as long as each term we can show that more objectives are being acheived. I'm thinking it won't be hard.. I had over half of Samwises' objectives for prep ticked off as already being met.. and Frodo is at least on track (grades 1-3 are grouped into one list that kids must meet before the end of grade 3/age 8) if not a little ahead of the game. I'm sure I'll have lots of interesting and amusing hs posts/pics through the year :D

And hopefully it won't even take me a month to post them lol.

Just a couple of days after I posted last on here, I got the phone call every mother has nightmares about. My 20yr old son, who lives in the US, was in a catastrophic car accident. His little Ford Ranger pick up truck did not stand a chance against the fuel tanker that we believe he never saw coming. Neither did his beautiful girlfriend, Susan... she died instantly.

As any mother would, I moved hell & earth to get on a plane to be there with him. He spent the better part of a month in a coma, with a few very diced moments where we weren't entirely sure he was going to make it through this. I was with him until Jan 2, and he had woken up, acted like he wanted to talk and was responding via giving a thumbs up or sticking out his tongue. It ripped me apart having to leave him... but at least I got to see his first steps towards recovery.

Now, he's said a few short words and is much more alert & aware during his waking hours (although true to form, he's still not much of a morning person ;) and, according to his neurologist, is going to make a good recovery. He has just moved in to Sheperd Center for spinal cord & brain injuries in Atlanta, which is just about the BEST rehab center in the US (they say top 10, but their stats and patient outcomes are second to none). So watch out Georgia... my boy is on the way back.

I did blog while away, but on a caringbridge site that I created to keep family & friends updated on his progress. I plan to TRY to keep both going because I need an outlet for my own ponderings as well as somewhere to talk about what has happened in our family and how it's going.