The Internet Was Out All Week!

We live on a beautiful farm in the North Georgia Mountains.   It is peaceful.  It is lovely.  The grassy hills and animals grazing peacefully all day long on them.  The pond at the end of the field ripples with the occasional fish jumping.  There is often wild geese, ducks or a blue heron on it.  The whole place is very picturesque.   The property is a little valley.  We have hills, woods and trees all around us and there in lays our trouble with technology.  To get a signal on our phones we have to stand in a certain area of our home or a certain area on the property to be able to speak to anyone and if it is raining...you  might as well forget it.  For internet...We are to far from the road to get any kind of wired in internet.   We are surrounded by hills and trees so can not get a signal from a satellite dish.  The only way we can get internet, is to run a wire hundreds of feet up our back hill to the edge of our neighbors field and then 30 feet up a tree. Hoping the receiver will pick up a signal from the tower near by.  Even then our signal is ify.  Our internet goes out constantly.

Before last week, if you asked me if we could go without internet for a week, I would have said, sure, no problem.

I now know we rely on it far more than I previously thought.  :)

The tower that serves us went down last weekend.  After going over it the crew decided that they were going to just replace all the electronics on the whole thing.  UG!  That our tower had been struck by lighting so many times, and been patched up so many times, that they felt they needed to just order all the parts and redo it.  Sigh!   And so my eye opening experience began.   

The first reality that hit was that my routine was now thrown off.  I get up in the morning before the children and read the Word of God and then all the blogs I follow.  I read notes from people and answer them.  I research things I am interested in and trying to learn about.  I write blog posts and post them.   I thought...well this is inconvenient but I can just go down to my dads every other day or so and catch up on my stuff.

Then Monday morning hit.  Monday morning means a school day.  The kids get up, do their chores, eat breakfast and  go to their desks and start their schooling at their computers.  Hmmmm.

I have a lot of educational things here in our "home school" closet.  Enough to home school all grades and kids straight thru 12th grade if I had to.  So I got out some curriculum and got them all going on their schooling.  We do have to do this occasionally when the internet is out so no biggie.  I had to be their actual hands on teacher for the day.  Teaching, answering questions, grading things and such.  It is a lot more work for me and major time consuming but part of our normal life if the internet goes down.  Sometimes if the internet is out I call a work day.  We all go outside to gets some things done...but it rained the whole week!  We had no option but to go ahead and get some schooling in.  Then Tuesday hit.   Same thing.  Then Wednesday.  Ok...by then I was getting tired and behind on house work and such.

The added work load, stress and pressure of hands on teaching every day, plus house work and another private stressful situation going on in our home, just really started making me have some of my health issues surface.  So Thursday it was over cast but did not rain..I called a day off from schooling.  Whew!  Praise God for home schooling year round!  Ok..we did not just call a day off.  We all needed out of the house.  So ran away for the day.  We left the house and went to a park that is close by and just let the kids play and burn off pent up energy.  God is so very good to us all!

We stopped to see Tim for lunch and ran some errands.

That is just what we needed.

As Friday went so much better and how can you mess up Friday anyways?

It is "Fun Friday" here and "Friday night movie night".  So a big deal and much looked forward to, day of the week, in our home.

So we made it thru the week.  Praise God for the weekend and a commanded day of rest!  I am in bed recuperating and resting up for the day.

Praise God the internet is back up and running once again.  Whew!  I never thought I would be grateful for the internet.  But praise God for it and the help it offers me daily, in not only running our home but educating our children and giving me an avenue of fellowship with others.

Can we go a week with out internet, you ask???  Not very easily!  :)

Psalm 9:9-10  The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.  And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.

 

 No matter what you go thru in life.  No matter how hard your week.  No matter what state of health you are in...May the Lord God be with you and carry you thru it all.  Teaching, leading, guiding and comforting you.

blessings,
susan