A Mother's Touch

This is a beautiful illustration of a mother's (and a father's) love.

I'm slightly annoyed by the phrases used: "a medical miracle" and "there may actually be a good grounding in science for what seemed like a miracle."

Science said he was dead. A human mother said let me touch him, love him.

Basil and Thyme and Tomatoes

Jared's kitchen garden was a complete success this year. He grew 5 or 6 types of herbs which we dried in our dehydrator. Now my pantry is full of our favorite and most frequently used herbs. He also provided us with some of the best-tasting tomatoes and peppers. Yum.

He also learned to respect the hard work of the farmer!

Show and Tell

I decided to enroll Bryna in Classical Conversations this year. The group meets for 3 hours on Friday mornings. Being in 6th grade, it will be her last chance to have accountability in memorizing the history timeline and material from five other subjects. She is enjoying it and I'm thankful she gets this chance. Another thing the students do every week is give a presentation in front of their class. I was a bit put off when I found out on the first day that she would give one every single week! But Bryna didn't seem to be put off. She enthusiastically prepared her speech. (It was on Rehoboam and Jeroboam. I'm not sure what inspired that, but anyway...) Because I was in Texas, I didn't get to see her give her presentation, but she tells me it was great fun. :-)

When I first started homeschooling, many of the magazines and books for homeschoolers suggested that the children share what they were learning with their grandparents. The idea was that it gave the homeschooled student an opportunity to have a bit of a classroom experience in which he or she could give a speech, do an experiment as if at a science fair, or explain how to make something. This teaches them to develop poise and keep their heads while standing in front of others! This also gives the child and grandparent something to share together. My children always loved doing this sort of thing.

I've observed something though. Some grandparents, I think, question the motives of the homeschool parent or child. It seems to me they are suspected of "showing off," being prideful, or bragging. I don't understand the bent toward thinking the worst of someone rather than the best.

Well, Kiernan is in Kansas this weekend for a friend's wedding, and Walt is flying in tomorrow afternoon. I haven't seen Walt for two weeks! Yikes! I miss him.

By the way, I love Skype. I've had two or three great conversations with Jillian since she's been at UD. And we can see each other's faces! It's great. Wish we'd done it while Kiernan was in Michigan. I'm missing my girls tonight.

Something I like about the South:

you hear "Sir" and "Ma'am" by the young toward their elders more often.

And wine to make glad the heart of man

The best thing ever said to me about wine: "Christians are the only ones who should drink wine. We're the only ones who can understand its spiritual significance."

My eyesight's not as good as it used to be.

I woke up from my Sunday nap, looked up on my wall where I tacked my definition of Christian Classical Ed. ..."Enabled to see with the eye of the heart"...I had written. I put it there to remind me what I am trying to accomplish with my two youngest children's remaining years of homeschooling.

Then I read some blogs. I read Andrew's at CiRCE. This guy's always talking about attentive perception.

Then I head over to Kiernan's blog where she is talking about wanting to see the world anew.

After I'm done with that, I decide to click on one of the blogs on the right side - presumably the blog of a friend of hers.

Guess what? This girl starts talking about creating vistas to show off the world that we see.

What does Father Stephen want to talk about? This and this.

I begin to think it's a conspiracy. Some would say it's a coincidence. "Don't make more of it than you should," they might say.

My eyeballs are, to use Andrew's words, "cloudy, befogged, dysfunctional." My eyes are fading (after all I'm almost 47.)

But Andrew's not talking about eyeballs, of course, but "seeing things as and for what they are."

I want the eyes of my heart to grow ever clearer, ever more perceptive. And it's clear that others want to see too.

But I'm cautious. My eyes can't take too much truth all at once, or I'll be blinded.

Architects for Our Day

Having a son who is interested in architecture and who is hungry for beauty, I am very excited about this. I showed the website to Jared. He was draw in by how different the houses are from the ones he sees every day. We liked the designs of these architects for their traditional, yet fresh, styles. He loved Andrew's house. He loved the inside of George's house, but wasn't as crazy about the outside.

One quote from the website:

"We think houses ought to feel like home, neighborhoods ought to seem neighborly, and churches ought to feel holy."

I couldn't agree more.