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I seem to have lost my momemtum in blogging. Don't know if anyone is still reading here, but I will post an update on our lives. We have started back to formal academics. Already have 23 days under our belt, although 5 of them were at the dance camp. We are all adjusting but it is going fairly well. I am still trying to figure where to put in the IEW writing program in terms of the day/week. But we will get that worked in somehow. We are now foster-parenting for 2 weeks, but not for children. Rather we have 4 adorable baby bunnies in our home for a short time. We will be keeping one of them and our friend who is fairly busy offered that we could keep them all to acclimate them to people handling. And my dc were very willing to comply. The stove business is doing slightly better than it had. We have now sold 3 stoves in the past month, so that is encouraging. We really could stand to sell many more, but God is keeping us on a short rope in terms of His provision. It is enough but not extra. The real estate business has had a few ups and downs. We tried to sell one of our properties, but just gave up and rerented the place. Another house was abandoned in mid July but we have the place now cleaned up and emptied of all her stuff and are looking hard to rerent that one. And the biggest news of the summer is that in November my MIL is coming to live with us. We are very happy and have been talking to her about it for more than a year. IT will change our lives, in many good ways and complicate things as well. She is somewhat dependent with a very giving personality and a deep love for us and for the Lord. |
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I know it has been a long time since I posted here; I haven't been in the mood to write. But we just visited a really exciting week and I thought I couldn't let it go by without documenting some of our experiences. This past week my two oldest children attended a local Ukranian Dance camp from 10-4 each day. Then tonight the group put on a stellar performance in costume of the songs and dances they learned throughout the week. They did a wonderful job, even kids like mine who don't do any other type of dance the rest of the year. This was our first year to attend, although last year friends of ours from 1.5 hours away attended so we went to the recital to see them and were quite impressed. This year our friends stayed with us for the week, which was lots of fun, and we then attended together. Even though we have no Ukranian heritage at all, we did learn some about that very rich heritage. WE were also introduced to the bandura, a stringed Ukranian instrument, that reminds me of the harp. I found that many parents were also around at the camp much of the time and were very friendly. Many people come back year after year and form lifelong friendships through meeting each year at the camp. IT was indeed a blessing to go and very affordable I might add and we hope to continue to attend in future years. |
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Two separate items I want to comment on right now. First there is an opportunity to sign a petition regarding the removal of the children in the Texas compound from their parents. I have a problem with the way this was done and evidently the Texas Supreme Court does too as they ordered the children to be returned to their families For anyone else who is bothered there is a petition here that you can sign to request impeachment of this judge. On another note I want to recommend an excellent website for anyone wrestling with voting for President this fall. I have wrestled some between McCAin or a 3rd party candidate. I find this website very helpful in researching the issues. |
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Baklava is a Greek/MiddleEastern dessert,, which I absolutely love. It is full of honey and sugar and butter and nuts and phyllo dough. I made it yesterday for the first time and it came out really good. Our world cultures coop was studying Greece today and we all bring food. The baklava was my contribution and I brought none home. So it was a hit. I recommend this recipe off Allrecipes.com as they not only tell you how to do it but also give comment from other users. I find that really helpful.
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We just got home from a 2 day trip to Gettysburg. We only live a few hours away, but we wanted to have enough time to really explore things and not rush through so we stayed overnight. We found an off season special for a cottage where we could cook too so that made things fairly affordable. It was a great trip. Gettysburg is a fascinating place, which I had never visited before. We spent about 4 months last summer studying the Civil War and I had wanted to visit since then and we were finally able to pull the trip together. Wednesday afternoon we arrived and spent several hours in the new visitor's center looking at the new museum on the civil war. It is quite impressive with lots of video and interactive exhibits. Thursday we got over to the battlefield by 9AM and first hired a licensed guide for a 2 hour trip through the battlefield. These guides are well worth their money as they are experts on the whole Gettysburg battle. Our guide drove our car and led through the 3 days of battle there in that town. We got our a few times with him but most was in the car, so after we left him off we drove back to the places that interested us most, Devil's Den and Little Round Top and explored to our heart's content. At this point the children were saturated with information, but I wasn't. I wanted to hear a few ranger's talks that afternoon that were free. So my dh kindly agreed to take the kids back to the cottage for a rest and I went to hear about the National Cemetary and then more of the battle, with a walking tour related to Pickett's Charge. Both talks were really well done. I was impressed with the young rangers that work there and their command of the subject matter and of their abilities to present the information. Then today after breakfast we cleaned up and moved out of our cottage and then spent an hour wandering around the town of GEttysburg itself, poking in various shops and spending no money. Then we went back to Seminary Ridge to eat our lunch by the statue of General Longstreet. While there we met a living history actor who kindly accomodated my dh's request to show us his musket and how to load it. With that send off we left town and headed home again just in time to escape the Memorial Day weekend rush. I felt quite satisfied that we did as much as was reasonable for 2 days and that we now have a good feel for the battle of Gettysburg. It is such a tragic place though, and I felt a sense that I should be weeping my way through the battlefield, for the thousands of young men whose lives were lost there and for the impact that had upon our nation. The whole civil war is so complicated and in so many ways I wonder if it really had to happen. But of course that is a mute question now. It was just enough time for me. I think I could go again but not anytime soon. I can't handle too much immersion in this tragedy. Now I need to come up for air in a less intense setting (although when I really look at the state of things around me I wonder if my world is any less intense.).. |
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Well, this week has been devoted to cleaning the fridge, organizing books and other articles lying in piles around the house, and potty training. I would like to proudly report that my 2 year old ( 3 in August) is peeing in the potty most of the time and did her first bowel movement in the potty. Naturally the rest of the family has been celebrating her accomplishments. I am glad we are moving forward. Potty training is one of my least favorite aspects of parenting. I am glad it doesn't usually last real long.
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I watched Anne of Green Gables tonight with my 3 darling daughters. My dh and son are away for two days so we are doing special things with just the girls. Anne of Green Gables is definately a girl movie and we loved it. But it did leave wistfully wishing that my dc didn't have to grow up and face this world, the one we live in now where marriage is no longer defined as one man and one woman for life and where babies can be killed because they are inconvenient and where the average American looks to the government to take care of all our problems, refusing to see that only makes thing worse. I know things weren't always as wonderful 100 and 200 years ago as it looks in the movies, but I do know families and communities were strong and the laws of God were respected and I long for a day when that will be true again. And I worry that my dc will suffer. And once again I turn to God and ask for His grace to prepare them for what He has called them too. |
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That is right. We have logged in our 180 days and we are done until July. Of course this does not mean we are done learning, just finished with formal math and spelling. Now we are going to unschool for the next 3 months. It should be fun and I don't have to record much of anything. A few goals I have include the following: 1) Introducing at least one Shakespeare play to my dc. We have Lamb's and NEsbitt's books of Shakespeare stories and I hope to read at least one to the kids and then perhaps explore a bit further with parts of the play and maybe even the play on video. 2) Keep a journal with my two oldest in which I write a daily question that they must answer in writing. The rules are that I will correct grammer and spelling with them and they must answer in complete sentences. We already started this week and I am enjoying the answers my dc are giving and learning more about them. I think this is going to be a blessing. My main motivation is that I don't want them to forget how to spell, after we have worked so hard this year. Both of them have advanced 1.5 grades in spelling to find Justin right on target for his age and Liana her perpetual year behind in academics. But none the less they are both progressing and I don't want to lose ground, or at least minimize the loss. 3) Continuing to read individually and together. 4) Working with my dd on practical application of math problems, as in everyday math that comes up with oral problems. 5) Encouraging my dd in her Botany study. 6) A 2 day field trip to Gettysburg later on this month. 7) My two oldest are signed up for a 5 day camp in our area focused on Ukranian Dancing. It is a 10AM to 4PM even each day and another family we know are also involved. It should be fun even though it has no historical or cultural connection to our family. But it is available and affordable. |
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I just finished Polishing God's Monuments today and I am really disappointed that the book is over. This is one of the best books I have read on suffering and dealing with pain. Jim Andrews, the author, is a pastor and Bible teacher in Oregon who weaves together the painful story of the suffering of his daughter and her husband with excellent theology on the whys and hows of dealing with suffering and a sometimes silent God. The story of his daughter Julie is a heart wrenching one - a traumatic fall from a horse at age 10, mono at age 18 or so that turned into chronic fatigue syndrome, and allergy treatments by a quacky naturapath in the years after that turned into environmental chemical sensitivities and a life of intense suffering such as few must suffer. Rev. Andrews does not suger coat the story nor does he sugercoat the struggles that he and his wife and family have undergone in wrestling with the Lord as anxious year by anxious year has gone past. Through it he offers hope and real markers of faith to hang onto forged in the furnace of their own affliction, truths which will bring light to other's darkness. This was a book which I underlined and have already about 4 or 5 people in mind to share it with. It is being published by Shepherd Press. |
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Today my dd had non-required testing. In PA we must test in 3rd, 5th and 8th grade. She is in 4th grade, so we didn't have to test, but we had a rather negative experience last year with another test. She did not do well and we did have to turn the test in. There was some anxiety and results were poor. So we took the advice of my evaluator to take another test this year in order to lessen test anxiety. Well in December I met a woman who is a certified tester for the Woodcock Johnson test. This test can only be administered by certain people. It is one that can apply to all ages. It is partly oral and partly written. It only lasts one hour. Well I am happy to report that my dd scored rather consistently on the 3rd grade level for everything with the strongest in applying her math and english skills. With learning challenged dd I am quite satisfied. No real surprised and evidence that she is learning. So if you have a struggling tester look into the Woodcock Johnson test if it is approved in your state.
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My oldest dd struggles with many academic activities. She didn't really learn to read until she was almost 9. Spelling comes hard to her although she is learning. MAth is another tough area and some days she ends up in tears over what seems like it should be simple and for her it isn't. So I was rather surprised when, after finding out that Jeannie Fulbright's science series Exploring Creation through... was available on the topic of plants, she asked for a copy of the book to read and study on her own time. I rather quickly went to CBD and ordered a copy for her and it arrived today. She has already read the first 3 pages and then asked me if she could narrate to me so she can make a notebook with narrations and projects related to botany. Mind you this is not something I am requiring of her. The science we are doing right now is Exploring Creation Through Astronomy and we are doing projects and narrations along with reading through each chapter. But she loves science and she loves plants; most particularly herbs. She already has plans for an herb garden this summer and we have several different seeds, some of which she is starting indoors. I am greatly encouraged at her love of learning. I have not killed it, even though I don't do everything right. Some things are getting in there. God is faithful and I see it once again. |
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Today we were spontaneous midday and decided to go to the lake 5 minutes away for a nature walk. It was so beautiful out - sunny and temps in the 60's which is maybe only the 3rd day or so like this this spring. We had gotten our spelling done and our math and our lunch and dh was free, so the whole family went. And we took our colored pencils and our nature notebooks. It was so wonderful to see the joy in their bodies as they ran and jumped in the sunshine, celebrating every part of their experience. Soon after they arrived someone spotted a daffodil and with shouts and thrills they determined each to draw it. So we parked our bottoms on the grass and opened the backpack with our materials and set to work drawing. Even Mom pulled out a nature journal for the first time. It was fun to see how happy they were that I was drawing. I never have done this with them before, but thought it was time to participate in this part of homeschooling as well. I thought they all did a great job and then it was on to more exploring - checking on the small pathside pond to see if there were any frog eggs; there were. And just running through familiar places. After an hour it was time to go as my little one needed to nap. But it was a wonderful reprieve in the middle of the day that leaves us all with a special memory. And leaves me with the determination that we have to do more of this!!! |
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Last Saturday my family and I attended an small international student retreat centered around introducing Easter and its history and customs to international visiters to the USA. Friends of ours put this on every year and this is our second year to attend for a portion of the time. In large part we go to introduce our children to folks from some other places, since our town is largely made of people who look much like us and who have several generations who have settled right here in this area. We usually get into a conversation, at least once in such a setting, on the topic of homeschooling, since it is much less common if practiced at all in most other countries of the world. This year was no exception as I ended up discussing homeschooling and why we do it with a Chinese woman, the mother of one son and a well educated woman out in the work force. She had a number of questions to fire at me, but all came from the perspective that we are harming our children, not socializing them well, over-protecting them, keeping their lives too narrow, and so on. She finally admitted that she never met anyone before who homeschooled and she had never heard of it. WE discussed socialization and what it means now vs. what it has meant over the thousands of years before the past 100. We discussed limiting our children's experiences and why my husband and I do not apologize for that. I think I gave her some good arguments, but I have two regrets about that conversaton. First, it was cut off prematurely by other good activities scheduled for the evening. And secondly, I did not think in the time I had to give her my bottom line reason of why I homeschool rooted in the Word of God, which is that I see no other way to effectively disciple my children in the ways of the Lord. I can't disciple them if I am not spending time with them. And if my dh and I aren't discipling them then someone else is, and it may not be the ways of the Lord. I regret that I did not answer her questions and arguments with the Word of God, for His Word is powerful and a two edged sword, the Scripture says. And I am challenged to handle the next conversation I have differently. |
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If you haven't heard of him he is a former NY State public school teacher who has since drop kicked the whole system and writes books and articles against government schooling. Here is a great intro to his work if you don't know it or a reaffirmation of your principles and ideas if you do and like him as I do. The article is titled "The SEven Lesson Schoolteacher".
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I read this book over the weekend at my parents house. The subtitle is A Natural History of Four Meals. I found this book to be very mixed for me. The subject of food is certainly of great interest to me. I love to eat and I enjoy most things connected to eating, including purchasing food and preparing it. Michael Pollan is a good writer too and his writing was smooth and easy to follow. There were three sections in this book : Corn, Grass, and The Forest. In each one the author traces a meal prepared in along this theme. So the first section on corn traces how corn is grown in this day and age and traces the byproducts through and shows how they are in most processed food that we buy today. That meal turned out to be a McDonalds meal for $14 that he shared with his family in his home state of California. Then he had a meal from Whole Foods Market that wrestled with the implication sof the "Organic" industry and what it has become. The meal from grass traced a meal that came through being raised in a grass fed system, mostly illustrated with the farm of Joel Salatin in Virginia. Because I know about Salatin already and find him to be a very interesting man who shares the same world view that I do and I was most interested in this section of the book. I also am a firm believer already in the value of grass fed meat and dairy and locally grown vegetables and fruits. The third section was a meal he prepared and got himself in the wilds of California (yes there are still some areas there that was somewhat untamed). Many of the points that Pollan made about locally grown food and the damages and danger in the food industry in this country I already knew and agreed with. He managed to pull some points together into a bigger picture for me though and also gave some interesting stories to flesh out my beliefs. But I found two things bothersome. First Pollan is a radical evolutionist, in my opinion, and almost every page has something related to natural selection or evolutionary changes in various species or plants. I got kind of tired of filtering this out and began to wonder how much I really agreed with him seeing that our world views are so different. The second thing that got to me was that after about 150 pages of analyzing things about food I began to wonder if this whole idea of a book like this wasn't rather myopic and over "intellectual". I certainly believe we should be thinking people but sometimes the analysis seemed to be over the top. Yet I still found much value in the book after those two things in my own mind. The fact is that our food system in this country is so far gone from how God designed things to be. We are caught in a processing trap of convenience and luxury values and we no longer know where our food comes from or who grew it or what is in it. Accountability is gone because consumers don't know the people who grew their food. As I have written before I am taking clear steps to have a different kind of life for the health of my family but also because the food tastes to much better. So over all I would still recommend this book with qualifications. |
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For any of you who are interested, there is another forum you can read my writing on. I am a staff writer for the online Catholic literary magazine called Nicean. (No, I am not Catholic, but my dear friend Tiffani is and she is the sr. editor for the magazine so that makes it Catholic.) The name Nicean comes from the Nicean Creed which is one of the older creeds in the church today. It is very similar to the Apostles Creed and is something Protestants and Catholics can agree on. Anyway, my column is called children's corner and so far I have done mostly book reviews. The whole magazine is worth reading and I encourage you to go to Nicean and check it out and not just because I wrote something there. |
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Well, we are successful (although not off our trees). Our friends went to Florida for 6 days and asked us if we would like to tend their trees so we have. Twice we gathered sap. On Tuesday we got a small amount of sap and it boiled down to 1/2 cup of syrup. Today was much better. We gathered 7 or 9 gallons of sap and have boiled it down to 1 quart of sap. I am not convinced it couldn't be thicker but my oldest dd is very worried that something will happen to our precious syrup so she begged me to stop it. It tastes good and looks like syrup and the thermometer says 219 F which is where it is supposed to be so I stopped it. Tuesdays' syrup is already gone as we had pancakes on Wed. morning and used the syrup all up. We will guard this one a bit longer I hope. And it will taste extra good because we made it ourselves. |
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It has been an interesting week at my house. We ran out of oil on Tuesday, although we didn't realize that until Friday, as the oil tank is really hard to read. We had the plumber out and he eventually figured that out, but after he did some necessary cleaning of the filter and the nozzle. Anyway, we opted not to get more oil right now as the price is really high and we have a multi-fuel stove going which is mostly adequately heating out house. (This morning was rather cold, but it was the first time it was below 60 when we got up. Still working to get it up above 60 but the stove room is warm.) But we don't have hot water, or we didn't think we did. So for 4 days we filled the tub with water from the stove and managed with the wood stove. WEll, yesterday it occurred to me that we have an electric hot water heater on the 3rd floor and perhaps it would heat the shower water adequately. Lo and behold, it does. That was some cause for celebration. In the meantime my dh has bought a large electric hot water heater and plans to get that hooked up this week to deal with our hot water situation. Eventually we will get more oil, but when we have the money to spend there. But I realized that although this is a clear inconvenience it isn't really a big deal to me and that is much because of the way I grew up. In the 70's oil crisis my parents changed their oil heat to all wood heat. So most of my significant growing up years our upstairs was cold and our downstairs was comfortable. I would get up early, dress very quickly, run down and warm up by the fire. Then I would go out to the barn to do my morning chores and then back in to eat, and change for school. Our hot water was heated behind the stove in the winter so showers were rationed. Not everyone could shower every day and the showers couldn't be long. That was the norm for us for many years. So I am grateful because one of my dh's prayers for our children is that they will be resourceful people. I believe this is part of the process for that to happen. I don't know what they will have to deal with when they are grown up, but I rather expect that since we are raising our dd's to be keepers at home and our ds to support a family with a wife at home, that they will have some financial challenges to navaigate as well. We hope to prepare them better to deal with challenges and hardships and not to whine and complain abou them. And I am looking forward to hot water in my whole house again and to spring when it is warm everywhere. In the meantime I am going to go downstairs to the stove room and warm up for a while. |
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We have been having a great time here reading lots of Cinderella stories. There are hundreds of variations of this ancient story, although of course not all of them are in print. But about 3 years ago I read lots of Cindrella stories with my first two dc. So now I am doing this with my 5 year old dd. But the two oldest are totally into it and don't want to miss one reading. We found several different lists through a google search online and then we looked at the big library that we visit and got about 8 or 9 versions out. Then we have also put in requests for another 12 or so through inter library loan. So far our favorites include "Ella's Big Chance: A Jazz Age Cinderella" by Shirley Hughes which has a great twist on the traditional French story, "Adelita; A Mexican Cinderella" by Tomie dePaola where no magic is used at all but still Cinderella marries the handsome prince, and "Cindy Ellen, a Wild WEstern Cinderella" by Susan Lowell. What is great about it too is that we are analyzing literature and comparing the versions and what is similar and what is different, but the kids don't really know that it is an exercise, so they love it. After these stories we plan to go on to other fairy tales. Most well known fairy tales ahve several versions, although none seem to have the choices abounding like Cinderella. We have several choices for Stone Soup, so perhaps that is next. |
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Not much to say yet. The sap has hardly run this week so we have yet to actually collect anything and cook it down. Perhaps the upcoming week will be better. |