Worst Blogger Ever

Daddy and Silas enjoy the sun.

 Yep, that's me. Worst ever! It might have something to do with the nine other people in my life. Keeps me busy. Today I'm holding a sick fevery baby a lot, so I have to be sitting. So voila, a blog post. Here are some ramblings...

We got to take a long overdue trip to Florida in January. So nice to get away from the cool weather and see my mom and dad down there. We also had a great visit with my Aunt Nancy and family and my cousin Courtney and her fam.

Enjoying the lake while sleepy cold alligators aren't a worry.

Warm enough to wade!

Lots of nature finds

Dock in my mom's backyard. Lots of time spent there.

Little man, swinging. 6 months old!

Hilarious lizard! Grace loves the lizards there.

 One of my favorite things we did while there was a visit to Margery Rawlings home. Such a sweet florida cracker home and grove. When she died, her husband put everything in storage and the home and land was donated to the University. After some years, it got to be too much financially for the college to keep up and it was given to the state. Her husband was still alive and took everything out of storage, donated it and them came himself and set it up just as it had been when she was living there! The house and everything in it is 95% original. Even the books on her shelf are exact copies of what she had there, the originals being kept safe in a humidity regulated environment. She stipulated that her place would never be used for commercial gain so you'll not find a bookshop or souvenirs there. Just her lovely home, some ducks and chickens, a small grove and some old wild citrus trees.

She wrote The Yearling right here.

The Royal Road to Romance by Haliburton on her shelf!

 Ms. Rawlings liked to entertain and cook for friends, she also owned a place at the beach and her husband owned and operated a hotel in St. Augustine (now the Ripely's museum). She didn't like all the people there so spent a lot of time at Cross Creek even after her success. I really enjoyed reading 'Cross Creek', about her life there, in the middle of this visit. It made it so real. She spent quite a few years, struggling on this farm before The Yearling brought her fame and cash. It was also part of the reason her first marriage ended.

Such a lovely comfortable home. Gregory Peck stayed here as a guest while filming The Yearling.

How my children enjoy Ms. Rawlings tangerines.

Yummy

Sunset at my mom's.

 This picture was snapped at the beginning of Jan, at the end of a lovely 2 weeks with Kaley and Jack here. I have missed my Girl so much. We had a great time just going to the grocery store and getting coffee. She was a peach and drove me up to Asheville for an errand. I hate how I look in this picture! But I am trying to stop avoiding the camera and being so critical of my pics as I want my kids and grandchildren to have them! It's really hard for me. But it's a perfect picture of Kaley with her cute new hair do. Which she has changed again already :/

A Good Monday

I actually did have a good Monday. And after some really bad nights around here, some sickness and some general hard parenting times, and that missing my Girl really bad that finally hit me,  that was a welcome thing.

A good friend really let me talk out some problems I've been having in parenting my two little boys, ages 3 and 5. It's so good to have friends who listen, give you lots of grace and unconditional love and great suggestions! So I am reading little people books, snuggling more, communicating better, being calmer and that is really going a long way with disciplining these little guys. Me, the CM nut (children are persons treat them as such) forgets that my little men are people and get gruff and angry and horribly tired and impatient with them. It has been a good reminder.

My two older children, 14 and 12, spontaneously decided they needed to work more independently. WOW This was great as I am feeling stretched very thinly these days, see paragraph above. They have always schooled at level together, but my almost 15yo son is in high school now and has really matured lately. His sister is not so mature in some ways and I am not anxious to rush that. Because then this happens:

Sigh. And then she will grow up too fast and move far away to somewhere cold and crazy like Minneapolis and I will miss all the long talks and coffee runs and new music she was always bringing me and drat if they don't become  your friends and then you are just supposed to live without them?!.


Ahem. Back to my Monday.  They also decided that he should pull ahead. Maybe she is more mature than I realized.

This is great. I could have pushed this sooner but said 12yo daughter can be extremely stubborn (don't know where that came from) and having this be partly her idea was very helpful. We quickly scanned the shelves for her own history and literature books, scaled down a notch, and found the perfect fit in quite a few books. Curtiss quickly pulled ahead and I am offering him a few more books I was holding back so as not to overwhelm Grace. Oh, it's beautiful.

The best son a mom could want. And totally by the grace of God, not by my parenting.

And lastly, my baby turned 4months old today! He is almost a whopping 20lbs and learning to use his little hands so well. His gift to me today? He took my face in his little hands, very systematically. So SWEET!

Wonder where he got those cheeks?

This picture really captures how he looks well!

Little somethings I am making and selling. Exciting!

Some September happenings...

Sweet sweet Silas! 2 1/2 months old

Apple orchard time! Max in the fake pumpkin patch :)

Curtiss did a good job catching everyone here! Mom and Robert were visiting from FL so we were all able to go together.

Silas lovin the sling

Everyone!

Grace's fall project, a wreath for our door. She got the idea from pinterest!

Science!

We are trying something new this year for science. When Kaley was in HS we did a typical package curriculum that she did not get much out of, did not enjoy and I had no hands on or experience with whats so ever. I really wanted to do it differently for the other children coming up.

While they are elementary age, we enjoy reading natural history books, nature journaling, playing in and experiencing nature, recording the changes in our world in a book of firsts and much more, but with a focus on the natural world. We use good literature to learn, just like we do any other subject. So why did I give that up for high school? I could never figure that out. I guess I just thought I had to, for the older student to acquire the knowledge they would need for life or upper level education.

Two things changed my mind. The first was this post at sageparnassus by Nancy. We started using narration journals for science! Instead of narrating our science books out loud, we began drawing our narrations. Oh what a difference in what we learned!

The next was hearing Jennifer Gagnon speak at the Living Education Retreat on science. She said a great many wonderful things that I don't have time to narrate here, but really she made me realize, I DO like science and I AM scientific. When did I lose my love for science? And think of myself as a person who is not good at it? Hmmm, probably about the same age my daughter stopped enjoying it. Say, middle school?

A couple things that were impressed upon me there were:

*You can't know everything.
*Why would we stop using living books for science just because our children are older??
*We are a scientific family.
*I need to build deep roots in the love of subjects for my students to hang knowledge on.

I know there were more. But here was another that happened in chatting after the conference. It was pointed out that at Charlotte Masons schools, they did not focus on one science topic per year, ie: biology one year, chemistry the next etc. The studied multiple branches of science at one time. That really got me thinking. And I decided I was going to try that!

So this year we are reading multiple science books: 

The Way We Work  for the study of the human body.
The New Way Things Work for physical science
An Edwin Teale book for natural history
The Wonder Book of Chemistry , my 14yo loves this book
Along Came Galileo for astronomy and a biography

Some color on the blueridge

These are our first term selections and I have some more I'm investigating for second and third terms. I'm really excited about a book I found on the periodic table. I can't believe that I am! I am learning SO much with my students.

The starlings are beginning to murmerate

The first chestnut tree I've seen in the mountains

September Birthdays...

My birthday babies! Maura being born on Ben's 2nd birthday! They are pretty good at sharing birthday parties.

Maura decorating for family party.

This is Grace rescuing our cake disaster. I made 2 beautiful grain free cakes that we just love and the oven stuck on 500 and burnt the outsides. So she made cake balls!

They were delicious.

Happy Birthday!

They said they actually liked the cake balls better!

Ben fit all his gifts in his new backpack. Knife, tea mug, tea (he drinks a cuppa every morning), jeans and a first aid kit. He is our resident medic.

Tea party time!

Grace helped me throw this together for Maura. We were able to pick up some used china and it made it very pretty.

She had a few friends from church over. They had a great time.

Humility

–Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think of itself at all. C.M.

My Charlotte Mason book club just came to the close of 'Parents and Children'. We certainly ended with a bang, or rather Charlotte did. I think the above statement is a new rather big idea that she has given me. This is the third book I have been blessed to study through in the two years I have been a part of this book club. It is such a joy to read through Ms. Mason's series on education with others. I have found her books to be so much more than instruction on how to teach my children. It is a devotional, a guide to life, a character training for me and a philosophy of life.

It seems like once or twice a year, I trip across a BIG IDEA somewhere in her writing. Last year it was this:

We become aware of an altogether unnatural and irreligious classification into things sacred and things secular. We are not in all things at one with God. There are beautiful lives in which there is no trace of this separation, whose aims are confined to the things we call sacred. But many thoughtful, earnest persons feel sorely the need of a conception of the divine relation which shall embrace the whole of human life which shall make art, science, politics, all those cares and thoughts of men which are not rebellious, sacred also as being all engaged in the great evolution, the evolution of the Kingdom of God.  vol 2 pg 130

I believe for the next little while, I will be meditating on humility. On what it should be in myself and how I should guard it in my children. I'll leave you with some more thoughts from Charlotte....

  It is a negative rather than a positive quality, being an absence of self-consciousness rather than the presence of any distinctive virtue. The person who is unaware of himself is capable of all lowly service, of all suffering for others, of bright cheerfulness under all the small crosses and worries of everyday life. This is the quality that makes heroes, and this is the quality that makes saints. We are able to pray, but we are hardly able to worship or to praise, to say, 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' so long as in the innermost chamber of our hearts we are self-occupied. vol 2 pg 285

The note of childhood is, before all things, humility.  This, if we think of it, is the state natural to children. Every person and thing commands their interest; but the person or thing in action is deeply interesting.

I have really wanted to do a post about nature study for a long time. And this is really not one. It is one of my favorite aspects of this CM lifestyle. I think when it really became wonderful for us is when I stopped sending my children outside to do it and started taking them outside with me as I did it. I began keeping a nature journal. I don't record as often as I should, my hands after all are often full, but it is a treasure to me now.

I had a friend recently ask me how I knew the names of so many plants and things.(I really don't)  I explained that if you just learned one new species on each nature walk you took, think of what you would learn and know over a lifetime. That is my goal, for myself and my children, each walk to learn to identify something new. And when I really know it is when I have recorded it in my journal because the mind only can know what it tells itself. That's how we process. So that brush drawing or sketch is really my narration of what I've learned and then I never forget it.

On the Blueridge Parkway

One of my favorite nature study lessons. We were possum sitting for friends.

Narration after all is what we all do when we are excited about something, have had something big happen in our lives or we are upset. We "vent", "share" and "process" with others.

Sliding Rock. It is amazing how the river bed becomes just this rock. Only my brave children slid down!

Curtiss loved it.

I wish this wasn't blurry. Ladies Tresses. Isn't it neat?!

Here is a cicada Ben found right as he was ready to shed his skin.

Climbing out

Wings plumping as the blood gets flowing. It was truly amazing to sit and watch it all unfold.

Our goal is to be out in nature one half day and one long day each week. It's been a total fail lately. Or if we do get out, we don't journal. Ok, well a fail in the last couple weeks. We do have a 9 week old. I am learning instead of beating myself up for these "failures" to just keep plodding along or I just tend to want to give up. It's just too rich to give up on! So I will keep fighting the chaos that can ensue when you are trying to get nine people packed and out the door, I will keep guarding and carving out the time. Because the fruits of what we have succeeded in are just too rich to not continue to pursue.