Blogging? What's that?

I'm so disconnected right now from posting.  But the dust is settling around here so I'll be getting back to a routine soon.  As fun as our summer has been 'away' from our usual efforts, I think both SweetPea and I need our schedule.

In these last couple of weeks before school begins again (AACK!!! I can't believe I'm saying that), I'm trying to focus on the big "O" word--organizing.  School prep, the last of our shed and yard projects, the basement (this one is a permanent sticky), etc.  I'm trying to finish up an article I'm writing, work in some visits with homeschool friends before they disappear off my radar when school starts, schedule dental check-ups, etc.  I would love to work in some of my own catch-up reading, but I try to preread our Sonlight literature--SweetPea's readers--and I haven't even begun yet.  I figure I'll attend to my catch-up list sometime after 2014!

And on the fun list is our ongoing sewing class with our friends.  This week we sew aprons start to finish, having done all the learning and prep work--now the fun stuff!  I'll post pictures when they're done. 

God is good, all the time!

A VBS week

A cool, rainy weekend was just what I needed to 'take me off the hook' for doing yardwork!  Not that I don't enjoy it, mind you, but we had a FULL week helping out with VBS at our church.  If I told you I had a class of 15 6 & 7-year-olds, that might clarify things a bit, huh?  :-) 

But as is typical of the goodness of the Lord, He had all sorts of graces and mercies on a challenging few days.  First of all, the kids were great!  Our topic was wonderful--the Covenant.  We had a terrific group of volunteers to make it all happen.  And when I was scrambling to pull together a lesson (I was a last-minute fill-in teacher and so had no time to prepare ahead of time), I was relieved to sense the Holy Spirit's leading...something workable for each day.  Praise the Lord, it got done.

I made a funny observation this week.  Every time I needed my group to gather together and head off to our next activity station, there were fifteen little bodies lining up in a flash next to me like so many iron filings to a magnet.  Efficiently, superbly lined up every time.  One of the excellent 'crowd' skills taught in public school!  Truly, I heartily appreciated that this week.  Have you noticed that trying to get a group of homeschoolers lined up is like herding cats??  We could take a lesson.

One little girl in our class asked prayer for God to help her witness to a little neighbor girl.  You should have seen the shock on her face when that little neighbor arrived late in the week!  Just in time to hear the whole way of salvation through Jesus and how much God loved her.  I saw a hard and sullen little face change in two days to a happy, participating part of our group--and rejoice to know God's mighty work has begun in her.  Things like this sure make it all worthwhile, don't they?

Ah, summer...

It's finally here!  We're warm, it's not snowing, and it's very green outside.  You can't tell me that I might still need gloves and boots.  Please.

And the other good news is that we finished school!  (Almost.)  We actually met all our state requirements for hours and days, and will just do a bit of wrap-up this month, then truly have a few weeks off.  We're in the middle of our last read-aloud for Sonlight Core 7, God's Smuggler, about Brother Andrew.  My goodness, what a wonderful example of being led by the Holy Spirit, of being truly sold out to Jesus and living every day by His heart.  It's been a fresh challenge to my own faith.

SweetPea finished Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra, and we certainly both have to give that program a huge thumbs-up.  She loves it.  And it's a relief to me to have found the right thing for her that we can track with now throughout high school.  Yay!

Having already done a big vacation in April, we're looking forward to some quality time to improve the homestead.  Hubby needs to rebuild a shed and do the finish work on our new patio roof, and I have a ton of yardwork and landscaping that will take me all summer to catch up on.  I haven't done much the last couple of summers; a nasty bout of candida last year nixed my energy for doing normal yard stuff, and it's been a year of recovery.  I'm praising the Lord for the increasing ability to tackle these things again!  "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me"!

We're starting a fun project tomorrow with another family--I'll be teaching them and SweetPea how to sew.  We expect to work at it throughout the summer, and I have the side hope it will jumpstart me back into sewing.  I used to make most of my own clothes, but it's one of those things that fell by the wayside when I started homeschooling. 

Off to see what Brother Andrew is doing in the next chapter!  Blessings on your day.  :-)

Apologetics today

We had a great opportunity today to hear Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis) do a presentation for students on defending your faith.  Wow, these guys have certainly done their homework!  I've heard and read much on the topics they present, but it was fresh and so well presented.  My favorite part was the discussion on DNA, how they have discovered that the DNA code is really a language--complete with counterparts to letters, words, and sentences.  God is so awesome!

I need to do some more browing on their website, but I'd certainly recommend it as a fabulous resource for homeschoolers.  He told us that very shortly after the news story came out recently on the "we finally created life in the laboratory," they had an article posted addressing it in detail.  The website is:  www.answersingenesis.org. 

Now I want to go see their Creation Museum in Kentucky!

A May Day blessing

It's May!  Yay!

I just had the most astonishing blessing for my May Day.  I was hard at work out by our front entryway, laboriously moving all the small rockwork (one rock at a time) to clean out the pine needles and debris that had fallen over the winter.  A s-l-o-w job.

I noticed across the street our neighbors' young grandsons had arrived for a visit and were weeding dandelions in the yard.  I only knew them by sight, and their grandparents only slightly as our paths don't cross very often.  A few minutes later I looked up, and to my surprise, here were all three boys coming up our driveway with a beautiful gift bag.  "Hello," I said, wondering if they were going to try to sell me something.

"Hi," they all three said.  The one with the gift bag held it out and said, "This is for you."

"For me???!"  I was nonplused.  For a fleeting moment I thought it was a trick, that something creepy would jump out of the bag at me.  I am deeply suspicious of groups of boys doing anything together, having been on the receiving end of pranks more than once.  Cynical, huh?

"This is from Lisa," the youngest towhead said.  Oh.  My neighbor, the grandma.

They waited as I opened the multi-colored pastel bag and drew out a card.  A May Day gift!  Inside were some lovely spring kitchen towels and a little gift for SweetPea.  I was trying to gather my wits, having been caught completely off-guard.

"Wow, what a thoughtful gift!  Tell her thank you for me, okay?"

They agreed, but kind of hemmed and hawed.  Then one of them said, "Could we please help you?"

Help me???  Do young boys volunteer to do that these days???  Boys that you don't even know??? You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather.  Of course my lightning-quick response was "Um, sure!"

They pitched in with a will and I had a lovely time, meeting them, talking about fishing and homesteading and guy things.  And we made quite a little dent in that rockwork.

Later, Lisa came to retrieve the boys and explained that where she grew up, they used to do May Baskets.  They would make paper baskets, fill them with flowers and candy, then ring someone's doorbell, leave the basket, and run off before they were discovered.  I was the lucky recipient of this year's May Day surprise!

Well, I tell you.  It brought tears to my eyes to receive such unbidden kindness not only from a neighbor I didn't know well, but to meet three wholesome, very dear young boys, simple and direct, and totally devoid of attitude.  How incredibly refreshing.  No, they're not homeschoolers (thought you might ask!), just raised right.

What a great reminder of how powerful it can be to bless someone's day.  Mine is blessed!

Honoring the Sabbath

I have learned from hard experience that the Lord had a very good reason for making the Sabbath for man.  We need the rest after six busy days!

It used to be that I would do carryover work from the week on Sundays, trying to catch up, but would find that come Monday, I was tired before the new week even began!  Seemed like I could never catch up.

But in keeping with a new understanding the Lord has been giving me of walking in His rest instead of my works, I decided to make our Sabbath be more what the Lord intended--a day of rest.  I'm not talking here about keeping Shabbat as the Jewish people do; more the spirit of the Sabbath.  A time to stop and refresh, focus on the Lord and His Word, rest.

It's hard!  Church life often makes our Sundays one of the busiest days of the week.  But, together with my hubby, we've decided to keep the decks as clear as possible.  I was reading a couple of weeks ago in Exodus 16 in the account of God giving manna to the Israelites.  They were commanded to gather twice as much the day before the Sabbath as none would appear on the Sabbath.  It occurred to me that I could ask the Lord for that same kind of thing--help on Saturday to get all my work done as well as preparation for Sunday.  Here's some of what I do to get ready:

-  I cook ahead, maybe even from Friday, and cook extra so that on Sunday all we eat is leftovers.

- I set up breakfast before bedtime Saturday night.  Sometimes I make a breakfast casserole or waffles ahead of time so that it's just a quick warm-up in the morning.

- Fresh placements and napkins out to look pretty and special for the Lord and my family.

- Giving or tithe check written and ready.

- Church clothes picked out and ready.

- A quick house pick-up and dishes put away.

It's so wonderful to wake up and not begin the day in a frazzled rush, getting us out the door to church.  I'm able to have my quiet time with tea and actually have my spirit prepared for worship service!  What a concept.

Another thing that has contributed to a peaceful Sabbath morning is Hubby's involvement.  It seemed that I was the only one who could read a clock on Sunday mornings.  No matter what time we got going, we were always in a late, mad rush out the door to church.  My indigestion and irritation did not help me receive much from the Lord!

So after some discussion, Hubby agreed to take over the leadership of Sunday mornings.  He set times for all of us to be up, showered and dressed, and when I had to have breakfast on the table.  It's incredible--we actually now have extra time in the morning, to the point that we have leisurely family talk over breakfast!!!  It's wonderful.

So all taken together, our Sabbath is becoming what it ought to be, little by little.  I look forward to it now, knowing I have 'permission' to not do my to-do list for one whole day.  If it must be done, it just might have to wait until Monday!

 

Snow and school

It's a cozy night to stay home...a snowstorm rageth outside (16" predicted over the next 24 hours!)...a fire crackles in the fireplace.  It's a typical Colorado spring snowstorm, wet and sticky and heavy.  Lots of shovelling tomorrow, prayers for Hubby as the makes the trek to work, hot soup and a quiet day of school (if we can concentrate!).  We might need to build a snowman, don't ya think?

It's been a good week.  Though all the credit goes to the Lord and His mercy, it also helps to have the prospect of a long and lovely spring break ahead of us.  We're headed for a visit to AZ in a few days to see our families and enjoy that famous sunshine.  All three of us have been showing definite signs of needing a break!  So I can rather smugly smile at the snow piling up and know that it might well be the last one I'll see this winter.  Ask me if I'm sorry. 

SweetPea and I have been studying the pre-WWI era in our studies, the tangled and desperate affairs across the globe that erupted in that horrible war.  We've had some really great discussions this week about governmental leadership, the 'masses' and what moves them to go one direction or another, slavery, and these end times.  Truly, history does repeat itself, and it seems also that the great and terribly hard-won lessons of one generation don't carry over to the next.  Why is that??

She's also been reading through a book of short biographies of all the presidents and has been quite struck with how rare it was to have one who really governed with wisdom and left a legacy of good.  Again, we've had a chance to contrast man's idea of 'ruling' with what God has instructed in His Word.  Plenty of points to bring up about our own times!

I love homeschooling!  What a wonderful opportunity to help our kids become thinkers, to understand the deep issues of life and see them by God's light.

With high school beginning in just a few months, I'm starting to research what I'm supposed to do and how.  I found a wealth of stuff on the HSLDA website, and I'm digging into Barbara Shelton's Senior High: A Home-Designed Form+U+La.  Wow, what an amazing resource!  It'll take a while to process all that's in it, but I love her focus on really being led of the Lord for each step, for new and fresh thinking about His design for my daughter's education.

Time to call it a day.  Thank You, Lord, for Your wonderful love and kindness.  It is a very great privilege to belong to you and to be the object of Your tender care.

 

 

Time for a breather

     Busy month around here...anyone else?!?  (So much for the it's-winter-and-I'll-get-caught-up-on-projects idea.)

     Let's see, we've spent a lot of time in the car getting from here to there.  Sweet Pea's done gym classes, an oral report skit with required practices, drama class with final performance, piano lessons and special practices for a performance, five most-of-the-day sessions of a free enterprise mock-town experience, a Valentine party, hang-out times with friends, church and church activities...you get the idea.  Then there's the round of colds that went through our family (SP's on her second one).  Oh, yeah, and we did school.

     So I think things are settling down a bit, at least for a couple of weeks.  It's time to get well and get back to our routine.

     I have to give a wonderful recommendation for an audio version of Great Expectations that we listened to from the library.  It's a BBC production and is narrated by Martin Jarvis--absolutely outstanding.  He does all the voices so distinctively that you think it's a whole cast of people.  After we finished it, we checked out the Masterpiece Theater version of the story, but gave up early on because we so loved the characters we'd come to "see" in our minds with Jarvis' performance that the visual seemed a betrayal of it!

     As much as I enjoy the Olympics, I'll be glad when they're done--they rather dominate our evening time.  And they're so...cold.  I guess my Arizona upbringing still stirs in my chilled winter veins.  I'm trying to remember what it feels like to sweat.

    

Mid-winter doldrums

February tends to be the month where I would like to pack my suitcase, get in the car, and go anywhere (except where it's colder or grayer).  I'm daydreaming about yard work, Vitamin D that comes from the sun instead of a bottle, vacation destinations, no school, birds singing, and the glories of spring.

It's not that I don't like winter; it has it's own beauties.  I like the lack of yardwork and outdoor projects so I can get caught up on indoor stuff.  I love the beauty of snow, the coziness of slippers and afghans and hot tea, of the fireplace crackling of an evening. 

Today God shared a special winter scene with me.  I was out for a walk circling a frozen lake in the thin mid-afternoon sunshine, and there, spread before me on the lake, were hundreds of Canadian geese, all fluffed out and settled down for their naps on the ice--and all facing the same direction.  So peaceful, so striking with their dark heads and markings against the white ice.  Behind them, the dark, jagged skeletons of bare trees edged the lake and in the distance, the long blue mountain range stretched out as far as I could see in either direction, topped with snow-capped peaks.  Wow.  Wish I'd had my camera.

So I'm trying to savor the season and fill my restless mind with thankfulness, and do things that refresh my spirit. 

Is it spring break yet?

 

Some good stuff in school

It was slow going last week trying to get back into the mental mode of school, but we did it.  Both SweetPea and I are glad to be back at it--we just seem to do better with a schedule.

We finished a very interesting book last week, Dr. Jenner and the Speckled Monster.  It's the story of smallpox, the ghastly impact on our world over the centuries, and the discovery of the vaccine that literally conquered this "monster" and changed the world.  I highly recommend the book even as an adjunct to a science program.  In fact, it's a fascinating read for anyone, and certainly throws a different slant on history.

I've said it here before, but I'm really delighted with our math curriculum, Teaching Textbooks.  I hear comments regularly from SweetPea of how much she likes the pace of it, the clear instruction, and how well she is understanding the foundational concepts of each topic.  Thank You, Lord!  This is music to my ears after a couple of years of curriculum-hopping to find what would work for her after we finished elementary Singapore.  I think we can just stick with it now through high school and expect good results.

And this week we will begin Great Expectations by Dickens as a read-aloud.  From the looks of the study notes, we'll be awash with new vocabulary.  A decidedly wonderful way to learn words! 

I'm using Writer's INC this semester as the basis of essay writing study, reading and discussing each of us with our own copy.  I love this resource and have been trying to use it more as a study text for some time, so this is a great chance to do that.

So we're off to a good start for 2010, and I'm so thankful for this amazing privilege of homeschooling! 

Ring in the new

Happy 2010!  My prayer for you is that you will know the "blessing of the Lord which maketh rich and adds no sorrow to it"!

We're already enjoying the sense of new beginnings around here...

...A new patio roof is about halfway done, with our Christian builders diligently working whenever it's not too cold to do so.  I think they're taking off Thursday; do ya think 13 degrees for a high is too cold to work outside?!

...Back to school today (yay! three cheers for Routine!), with some new directions before us.

...Some new and improved kitchen organization is making things better and more enjoyable in the cook's department, and I'm loving my new over-the-sink cutting board with hole/strainer basket.  How did I ever live without it??

...And of course the excitement that comes with new goals.  I love that about the Lord, how He is ever able to make all things new.  I don't know about you, but I'm really ready for His renewing touch on a lot of things.

I like the bracing effect of goal-setting each January.  Gives me a chance to closely examine things, decide what has not been working, what priorities and processes have changed, and what can be improved.  This past year some health issues really dragged me down, so it's safe to say that nearly every area of my life needs improvement.  Praise God, He is the "glory and lifter of my head"!  I'm depending on Him day by day to truly be my New and Re-Newed life this year.