Why You Should Write Down Your New Year's Resolutions

It is an advisable plan to write down your good resolutions and specify the faults to be abandoned. It would be rather annoying to find that you had been should say for a month with much self denial avoiding the use of bad language only to discover that smoking was the error you had resolved to turn your back on. A little forethought and method, as for instance, getting a lawyer to draft out your resolutions prevents mistakes of this kind occurring.
From About The Idler: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine edited by Jerome Klapka Jerome, Robert Barr, Sidney H. Sime, Arthur Lawrence

A big thank you to Common Room Readers...

... for leaving so many helpful and thoughtful comments on my earlier post.

It will take time to make any decision (and it will take life staying the same as it is right now, which rarely happens) but I was impressed with the strong common thread running through such diverse comments. Almost everyone urged doing something abroad first. Although I don't have time at present to delve further into a post on future plans, all of the comments about traveling overseas reminded me that I haven't posted my big news for spring semester here yet.

Spring Break will find me heading to Europe to spend a few days in London and about a week in Germany, visiting a friend in the Black Forest region. I am excited, yes, but mostly in shock that it's actually happening. There have been a couple times in the last several years when an overseas trip was supposed to happen but ended up falling through for some reason or another that I had absolutely no control over.

I almost didn't go this time. There are other things that could be done with the money. My family already sees very little of me during the semester, and going overseas for ten days rather adds insult to injury. It means an absolutely insane spring semester; I get back and start classes again the very next day.

But I purchased the tickets anyway.

Several months ago I was checking out some books on Europe for a middle aged library patron. I asked if she was planning a trip. "No," she said, "I should have gone earlier in life. I have too many health problems now to travel, and the only way I can do it is by reading these travel books or watching travel videos."

I thought about Helene Hanff's books, about how it used to frustrate me to no end that she wasn't able to make it to England for so many years, until it was too late to meet some of her friends there.

Life has been...a challenge lately, to put it mildly. These challenges alone are enough to make a person think twice about big plans like these. And yet, the worst thing to do (I think, and I could be quite off) would be to let these things define and limit the rest of life.

And so, thanks to God's abundant generosity (seen via school grants and my own family's encouraging spirit as I've contemplated this), I'm going to Europe for the first time. I should be spending time in Basel, maybe at the Alps, walking to old castles, visiting World War I sites in France, and catching up with the dear friend who lives there. I will be meeting Christian brethren from different countries.

On the language side, I looked seriously into doing Spain for a few days instead of London, but those costs were prohibitive. Should I be blessed enough to make it back there another time, Spain will definitely be a point to visit.

Apart from everything else, I'm also looking forward to this trip as a way to see if international travel is something I'll love as much as I anticipate. :-)

So there it is. Europe, 2008... not quite in the way I've imagined before, or even the countries (Germany & Switzerland) that I would have picked first to visit, but it's happening. And I hope I appreciate every last moment.

(Mother-dear, shall I take every opportunity to enjoy myself? ;-)

[Note from the DHM: Yes, dear, because I know you are so much more sensible than Lydia Bennet that your ways of enjoying yourself will be admirable, tasteful, wise, and nothing to bring a blush to a maiden's damask cheek.=)
I'm excited for you, if a touch envious. And I think that since you lived in Japan for five years, have visited Korea, and enjoyed those experiences very much, there is no doubt that you will love traveling in Europe as an adult as much as you enjoyed Asia as a child.
Incidentally, Common Room Readers, this would be a lovely place for you to grace us with your tips on dealing with Jet Lag- the HG gets back from Europe 12 hours before she has to get up for her first class after Spring Break.]

Care When Making New Year's Resolutions

It is well, I admit, to make a few good resolutions such as not to commit murder without some small provocation. But even this is a matter of climate and law. In Texas many a good man has shot his friend in spite of his firm resolve never to kill any but strangers. And even when a man might reasonably think himself safe in making a resolution he is sometimes crowed over by fate. Cannibalism is a thing the average man may firmly resolve not to take to. But then let him keep ashore and in towns where they sell provisions, for I knew a man of this kind who was lost in a shopless waste of mountain snow. He had a partner and the partner died. The other didn't. I shall write this story at full length one day when I get time and the requisite experience The experience is my difficulty. But next year I am going to Central Africa....

Morley Roberts in The Idler: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine edited by Jerome Klapka Jerome, Robert Barr, Sidney H. Sime, Arthur Lawrence

New Year's Resolutions Just for Fun

I have given up making any resolutions at all. The last time I looked out of my front door as the Old Year was at its last gasp it was a frost night and the stars were shining gloriously in a steel blue sky. There was a fair amount of traffic still about; the cab horses were sliding on the roadway; small boys were sliding on the pavement, and boys of a larger growth, respectable elderly gentlemen, were unwillingly imitating them. The spectacle inspired me with one of my happiest New Year's resolutions. "For the future," I said to myself, "I won t worry about anything . I will let things slide."

That resolution I have honestly endeavoured to carry out. Things that used to trouble me once trouble me no longer. I let them slide. If I see a scathing criticism on a hook or a play which I have written, I don't walk about or tear my hair and thirst for the writer's blood. I read the criticism, shrug my shoulders, and let it slide. If a good natured friend comes to me and tells me that so and so has been saying wicked things about me, I don't write a furious letter to so and so and ask him what he means by such behaviour. I let it slide

The other day the builder who was repairing my leads informed me that the roof of my house was in a very unsafe condition that I ought to have it entirely reslated. I thanked him for informing me of the matter but I let it slide. There I confess that in sticking to my New Year's resolution I made a mistake. My roof slid so far that some of it fell over into the street and people in various walks of life came to me with portions of slate embedded in their skulls and demanded compensation. A roof is the one thing which if you hold a repairing lease it is never advisable to let slide. As to New Year's resolutions well everybody lets them slide.

George Sims

From: The Idler: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine edited by Jerome Klapka Jerome (author of the delightfully funny Three Men in a Boat To Say Nothing of the Dog), Robert Barr, Sidney H. Sime, Arthur Lawrence

Literary Party Games

AUTHORS CONTEST
Questions to be answered by giving in each case the name of a well known author
1 A name that means such fiery things you can t describe their pains and stings
Burns
2 What a rough man said to his son when he wished him to eat properly
Chaucer
3 Pilgrims and flatterers have knelt low to kiss him
Pope
4 Makes and mends for first class customers
Taylor
5 Represents the dwellings of civilized men
Holmes
7 A chain of hills covering a dark treasure
Coleridge
6 Is worn on the head
Hood
8 A brighter and smarter than the other
Whittier
9 A worker in precious metals
Goldsmith
10 A vital part of the body
Hart
11 A disagreeable fellow to have on one's foot
Bunyan
12 Meat what are you doing in the oven
Browning

AUTHORS VERBAL GAME This is an interesting and instructive game The players seat themselves so as to form a ring An umpire and a score keeper are appointed and each player in turn rises and announces the name of a well known book The one who first calls out the name of the author of the book scores a point the one who has the largest score when the game ceases is the victor and may be given a prize This game may be varied by the naming of well known authors leaving the titles of books by these authors to be supplied

And it may be played in yet another way Give each player a pencil and paper and instead of calling aloud the title of a book as each author is announced ask the players to write on a slip of paper the name of the author the title of a book by that author and the name of a character in the book Thus
1 Oliver Goldsmith; She Stoops to Conquer; Miss Hardcastle
2 Harriet Beecher Stowe; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Miss Ophelia
3 William Shakespeare; Romeo and Juliet; Tybalt

If the game be played in this way the scores will probably be close.

Vintage New Year's Game

"This game is played by providing each guest a paper and pencil and having ten letters of the alphabet read to the company These are to be copied the guests are told to write a New Year's resolution of ten words each beginning with one of the letters used in the order in which they are given out These importuned resolutions when read will afford much amusement"

BRIGHT IDEAS FOR ENTERTAINING by Mrs. Herbert B. Linscott, published in 1905

Sunday Hymn Post

About this book Read this bookFavorite Hymns: Stories of the Origin, Authorship, and Use of Hymns We Love By William Lee Hunton

Sunday Hymn Post

Come, Thou almighty King,
Help us Thy Name to sing, help us to praise!
Father all glorious, o’er all victorious,
Come and reign over us, Ancient of Days!

Jesus, our Lord, arise,
Scatter our enemies, and make them fall;
Let Thine almighty aid our sure defense be made,
Souls on Thee be stayed; Lord, hear our call.

Come, Thou incarnate Word,
Gird on Thy mighty sword, our prayer attend!
Come, and Thy people bless, and give Thy Word success,
Spirit of holiness, on us descend!

Come, holy Comforter,
Thy sacred witness bear in this glad hour.
Thou Who almighty art, now rule in every heart,
And ne’er from us depart, Spirit of power!

To Thee, great One in Three,
Eternal praises be, hence, evermore.
Thy sovereign majesty may we in glory see,
And to eternity love and adore!

Cyberhymnal information

Future Options: The HG Considering Her Future

Or, rambling greatly on a future that is ever changing and unsure.

Option 1: The South American One =With this option, I'd take a year off before grad school to go to a Spanish speaking country for a year (either an au pair or doing missions work of some kind, I'm quite confident I could do either of those things). Then I'd come back and do Latin American Studies.
I'm drawn to this idea because of how much I've loved my Latin American classes. It's a fascinating world. The blend of Old and New World in South America is much more interesting (I think) than the blend we had in North America. Also, taking a year to get comfortable in a Spanish-speaking environment would be excellent.
Drawbacks: Taking a year off in the middle of studies is perhaps not a wise notion. Also, this love of Latin American studies is a relatively recent phenomenon in my life and may be attributed only to the brilliant professors I've had.


Option 2: The North American One - Here I'd go straight on to grad school and study some period in antebellum American history.
This would of course be much easier and faster than Option 1. There's a common language with this topic, and not as many geographical boundaries.
I've loved this time period for years... America was pushing and testing the notion of the modern Republic. Developments and tensions were there in full measure, making it a rich time period to study.
Doubt: There's a lot of work already going on in this field and I don't know that I'll want to elbow my way through the competition.


Option 3 - The British One - With THIS option I'd go on to grad school and study the late 18th/early 19th centuries of British history. This would involve long term study overseas, I think.
What I love about this plan: Duh. Britain.
Drawbacks: This might just be a throwback to some of my teenage fantasies. It will also be quite competitive and has the potential to be expensive (although I guess I could grants for that... more paperwork. yay).

Options 4a and 4b: The Stopping at a BA Ones

4a. Getting married and having kids. That would change the whole scenario. But you kinda need a guy for that, so we'll table that discussion at present.

4b. Just quitting after getting a BA. I'm not really interested in getting an MA in public history. I have so many friends/classmates who are doing it right now and I think it's a cool degree idea... but it's not one that I think I'll fit in with. I don't particularly care for the idea of museum administration or giving tours to kids. In fact, I hate the thought of being a tour guide. Research and teaching sound most interesting to me.
If I stopped at a BA, I'd like to do some teaching with homeschooled students. That would be rather fun. With a BA in history I know I could get a job tutoring at our community college, or even a job at a library.

So there you have it. The Realistic, The Rather Unrealistic, and the Truly Fantastical. Now the trouble is to figure out which is which.

Why I Like Michael Innes

He writes things like:
'... his presence was otiose, anomalous and out of time.'
And dialog like:
~'I am enormously respectable.'
~'You are most assuredly nothing of the kind. In fact, no adequately informed person would much want to have dealings with you, except, perhaps, ...of an irregular sort.'

"There's plenty of room on this trunk without question of disagreeable contiguity."

He uses words like limitour and recontre (which the dictionary tells me is the same as rencounter).

Here is a nice list of all the Innes stories in chronological order. I don't always quite agree with the reviewer, but the information is useful and the quotes are delicious.

Rambleations

The Equuschick is going shopping tomorrow.

She is going to buy a new purse (with the gift certificate given to her birthday by the venerable HG) and also an organizer, to assist her New Year's Resolution, which is to Be Organized.

Rather a grand resolution admittedly, but she's been practicing all this year and she's made some definite progress in being a tidier, more put-together, sort of person.

2008 shall be the year where it all comes together, the year where The Equuschick shall throw off the shackles of her disorganized past and find the freedom that can only be found in the self-control of one's own life.


(Actually 2008 is the Year of the Rat, but never mind. The Equuschick shall be an organized rat.)

Having said that much, last year began with some rather grand dreams as well, but one by one the dreams were shattered as the Common Room family entered upon some of the darkest months they've ever known.

And on a lesser scale, nothing kills motivation like spending over a month in excruciating pain,on narcotics.

After the pain and the drugs came the bills, but after the bills came the help so, according the Mathematics of Christianity, The Equuschick is richer now than when the bills came and the financial concerns are beating a retreat.


But the confusion lingers, and the visions of her future still refuse to dance.

The Equuschick is fighting an irrational fear that 365 days from this moment she'll be right where she is now, and she will lose her mind.




Carpe Diem. How do you seize the day when every time you try it is wrenched from your grasp?

This might all have something to do with the prayers The Equuschick tries to pray, because in the end she doesn't want those dreams to come true that God doesn't want for her.

She just wishes that when He throws roadblocks, He would post signposts. He doesn't always do that. Sometimes He just says "Sit still and wait a bit, I'll show you when you're ready."

But The Equuschick is a very impatient creature indeed, unfortunately

Inkheart

Note to the Progeny: Y'all should go over and tell Krista what you think about the trailer for the upcoming movie and your feelings on the book. She says she doesn't know any other fans.

For those who don't know- Inkheart is classic German fantasy, sometimes dark, always mysterious, scary, magical, beautiful, and not for those who eschew magical, fantastical themes from their reading repertoire. If you skipped Harry Potter you might still like Inkheart, but if you don't allow Narnia or Lord of the Rings, I don't think you'll like Inkheart. I am not passing judgement, just trying to pass on information for those who might want it. I am always fearful that somebody will put overmuch trust in my judgment and pick up a book I love that will shock, dismay, and horrify them. I recommend this book with reservations, and it is not a good match for every reader.

Ten years ago I probably wouldn't have permitted my Progeny to read it, either, but then, ten years ago my Progeny were all 14 and under, and ten years ago we did some things differently than we do now (I don't really have any regrets on either score- I think we needed to be where we were then and it's good to be where we are now, and I expect and hope that we will be in a different place in another ten years). My husband read it aloud to the youngest two children, with suitable omissions (there is 'language'), and pauses at tense, scary moments (there are plenty of those) when the dilated pupils and sweaty palms of the children made it clear it was time for some hot cocoa and games of Go Fish. When the parents are reading to their own children they know these signs and know what to do about them (this is why, by the way, I think schools should be more cautious than homes about what books they read to other people's children).

The 11 y.o. First Year Girl is reading it herself this month, in an expurgated paperback copy belonging to Pip ('words' whited out), and I know how that makes some of you shiver with distaste, but there it is. It is quite a change from Elsie Dinsmore, but she insists she still loves Elsie and wants to read the next book in that series as soon as she finishes Inkheart.

I was reluctant to let her read it at all (actually, it occurs to me that this is true of both titles for different reasons), but with this large gap in age in our family (six years between our fifth and sixth children) it makes some things in life a little more complicated than they used to be.

We enjoyed it so much, and she was so interested that we didn't want to leave her out- some of her sisters are rereading it and discussing it in view of the upcoming movie and the current trailer. It helped, too, that she's already been read to from Tolkien, the Blue Fairy Tale book, Norse mythology, Pilgrim's Progress, Shakespeare, The Odyssey, and the Old Testament- not that I classify the Old Testament as myth or fairy tale, but that the stories of, for instance, David and Goliath or Jezebel being tossed out a window and eaten by dogs are as grim and bloody as anything she'll be reading in Inkheart.

What I am most excited about seeing in Inkheart is Dustfinger as portrayed by Paul Bettany. He has played such widely diverse roles as Chaucer in A Knight's Tale, the psychotic Silas in The Da Vinci Code, the Doctor in Master and Commander, and too many others to list (and which I know nothing about). He's been brilliant in every one, completely and totally recreated himself as that character, and I expect him to do full justice to the character of Dustfinger, and bring something unique and worthy quirk of his own of the role.

We are not quite as impressed with the choice of Andy Serkis for the evil Capricorn- he did a wonderful job, of course, as Gollum, but I can't see him as Capricorn and I didn't really like what I saw of him on the trailer. Brendan Fraser, who played Adam in Blast from the Past, is an interesting choice for Mo, the silvertongued father.

Customized Search Engines

Over in the left column there are two new elements, perhaps temporary if I can't get smarter about it than I am being now.

They are customized search engines (or they are supposed to be). One is for the AmblesideOnline site, which is a rich, but difficult to navigate, resource, and the other is for The Common Room because I have found blogspot's own search function to be less than optimal.

Currently, I am clearly not doing something correctly. I'll come back later and slug away some more. Meanwhile, thanks to Henry Cate at Why Homeschool for pointing out this other homeschooled specific search engine.

Snowflakes

Snow-Flakes
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in the silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

That first stanza has been part of our winter poetry copywork for years and years. I came across it in some book or other- I've forgotten which book, although it seems it might have been a biography of Helen Keller or her teacher, Annie Sullivan.

I had never seen it before and did not know there was more to it until the days of the internet came to our home and I discovered the wonders of Google.=)

Spontaneous vs Impetuous

Too often we are overly self-conscious; we play roles. Recently I saw a young man on television whose performance did not delight me. It depressed me.

He said, "As opposed to for example in other words in terms of borrowing from a loan company, you'd do better at a bank." He hadn't meditated much on that one. He was thinking about the setting, not about the subject.

The conditions which created his "spontaneity" were (1) the talk-show format, where you have to talk, and you have to put on a show; (2) a time allotment, which means the poor man had to keep on talking without pausing to think what he was saying; and (3) the man himself--trained to value such meaningless phrases as "for example," "as opposed to," "in other words," and "in terms of" because he thinks they sound learned.

The man was also quite conscious of his own image in the TV monitors and had little leisure for looking clearly at the matter at hand as my nephew had looked at the dust flecks.

If spontaneity implies the existence of an inner energy to begin with, one felt that his energy had petered out by the time the man delivered his remark.

I'm being hard on him, and he was, as I have said, young. Carlyle wrote of nineteen-to-twenty-five-year-old youths that they had reached "the maximum of detestability." We have been telling ourselves that youth is beautiful and spontaneity one of the most beautiful things about youth. I wonder if spontaneity is not sometimes a euphemism for laziness--an indulgence which Carlyle found in youth. Isn't it much easier not to prepare one's mind and heart, not to premeditate, simply to have things (O, vacuous word!) "unstructured"?

If you leave a thing altogether alone in hopes that it will happen all by itself, the chances are it never will. Who learns to play the piano, wins an election, or loses weight spontaneously?

I have just read Jean Nidetch's book on the Weight Watchers, and while it is obvious that her basic theme (that people get fat because they eat) is hardly a world-shaking discovery, her method is one that made her a millionaire: get people to work at their problems together. Reducing doesn't just happen. It isn't a thing the majority succeed in doing all by themselves.

She doesn't let them make up their own diet as they go along--that's what put the fat on them in the first place. She doesn't suggest that losing weight is best done when you feel like it. She doesn't even say that it works only if you are being "yourself."

In fact, I was reminded throughout the book of how many analogies there are between losing weight and practicing Christianity. There are rules to obey. You will to obey them. Some people insist that the devotional life is somehow purer or better if it is pursued only when we feel like it. Worship for some is thought to be an "experience" rather than an act. Losing weight is also an experience--there's no doubt about that--in fact, the expression "being born again" occurs in the testimonies of those who have done it. But losing weight most certainly has to begin with an act.

It is an act of the will. You decide to do this and not to do that. You must arrange, prepare, and carefully carry out your plan. The combustion of those daily calories will happen without fail, but only when the conditions are properly set up.

Love is another thing. ''But I want it to be spontaneous," people say. They think that if nothing is happening it is good enough reason for a divorce. "If it isn't spontaneous, it isn't love," they tell us. Where did that idea get started? Do we understand what spontaneity requires?

The kind of love the Bible talks about is action, and it comes from a force and an energy within. That energy is the love of Christ. His love creates the condition of heart (it does not come from nowhere) which enables us to do things: to give a cup of cold water, to go a second mile, to "look for a way of being constructive," as Phillips' translation puts 1 Corinthians 13:4. "It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when everything else has fallen."

Christian love is a far cry from a misunderstood spontaneity which is merely unstructured. This love is a very firm and solid thing indeed, requiring will, obedience, action, and an abiding trust in the "Strong Son of God, Immortal Love."

Copyright© 1988, by Elisabeth Elliot
all rights reserved.

Taken from Back to the Bible's Elisabeth Elliot daily devotional.

Sometimes I think we speak admiringly of 'spontaneity' and what we really mean is impulsive, impetuous, lacking in self-discipline. We talk about being 'young at heart,' but what we really aspire is not that fresh, child-like spirit, but immaturity, childishness- the unattractive self-centered attitude of the Harold Skimpoles of this world is not admirable.

In Bleak House, Dickens says of Harold Skimpole that he:

was a little bright creature, with a rather large head; but a delicate face, and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and spontaneous, and was said with such a captivating gaiety, that it was fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr Jarndyce, and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance, in all respects, of a damaged young man, than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an easy negligence in his manner, and even in his dress (his hair carelessly disposed, and his neckkerchief loose and flowing, as I have seen artists paint their own portraits), which I could not separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some unique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like the manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life, by the usual road of years, cares, and experiences.

I gathered from the conversation, that Mr Skimpole had been educated for the medical profession, and had once lived, in his professional capacity, in the household of a German prince. He told us, however, that as he had always been a mere child in point of weights and measures, and had never known anything about them (except that they disgusted him), he had never been able to prescribe with the requisite accuracy of detail. In fact, he said, he had no head for detail. And he told us, with great humour, that when he was wanted to bleed the prince or physic any of his people, he was generally found lying on his back in bed, reading the newspapers or making fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn’t come. The prince, at last, objecting to this, “in which,” said Mr Skimpole, in the frankest manner, “he was perfectly right,” the engagement terminated; and Mr Skimpole having (as he added with delightful gaiety) “nothing to live upon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks.” His good friend Jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several openings in life; but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which, he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and here he was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of making fancy-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of art. All he asked of society was to let him live. That wasn’t much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a mere child in the world, but he didn’t cry for the moon. He said to the world, “Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn-sleeves, put pens behind your ears, wear aprons, go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only — let Harold Skimpole live!”

You can read a further description of Skimpole and his delight in beauty, in the sun, in those simple things of life such as comfortable armchairs, grapes, nectarines, and music, only somebody else must pay for them, in chapter 43 of Bleak House, where we also read Mr. Jarndyce's estimation of how Mr. Skimpole perhaps came to be such a child:

“Why,” he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, “he is all sentiment, and — and susceptibility, and — and sensibility — and — and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him, somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth, attached too much importance to them, and too little to any training that would have balanced and adjusted them; and so he became what he is.

I suspect we live in a culture where efforts toward 'regulating' ourselves or our children and training ourselves or our children to a self-discipline that would balance and adjust the defects of our qualities is all too dreary and boring for words, not to mention just too hard.

News

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide bombing in Rawalpindi that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, a party aide and a military official said. (AP)

Here's a roundup of blog reactions at Pajamas Media.

Lunches and Eats

Biggie at Lunch in a Box, the only food blog I read with regularity, announces that in the recent food blog awards for 2007, her blog won in the best kids and family category.

There are plenty of fun food blogs to look over and learn from. I'm going to be trying this Chocolate Biscotti recipe from Farmgirl Fare, which won best rural food blog. The Autumn Millet Bake from Food Blog of the Year, 101 Cookbooks also looks tasty and practical (sans hazelnuts).

The Call of the Christian, by John Greenleaf Whittier

Not always as the whirlwind's rush
On Horeb's mount of fear,
Not always as the burning bush
To Midian's shepherd seer,
Nor as the awful voice which came
To Israel's prophet bards,
Nor as the tongues of cloven flame,
Nor gift of fearful words,--

Not always thus, with outward sign
Of fire or voice from Heaven,
The message of a truth divine,
The call of God is given!
Awaking in the human heart
Love for the true and right,--
Zeal for the Christian's better part,
Strength for the Christian's fight.

Nor unto manhood's heart alone
The holy influence steals
Warm with a rapture not its own,
The heart of woman feels!
As she who by Samaria's wall
The Saviour's errand sought,--
As those who with the fervent Paul
And meek Aquila wrought:

Or those meek ones whose martyrdom
Rome's gathered grandeur saw
Or those who in their Alpine home
Braved the Crusader's war,
When the green Vaudois, trembling, heard,
Through all its vales of death,
The martyr's song of triumph poured
From woman's failing breath.

And gently, by a thousand things
Which o'er our spirits pass,
Like breezes o'er the harp's fine strings,
Or vapors o'er a glass,
Leaving their token strange and new
Of music or of shade,
The summons to the right and true
And merciful is made.

Oh, then, if gleams of truth and light
Flash o'er thy waiting mind,
Unfolding to thy mental sight
The wants of human-kind;
If, brooding over human grief,
The earnest wish is known
To soothe and gladden with relief
An anguish not thine own;

Though heralded with naught of fear,
Or outward sign or show;
Though only to the inward ear
It whispers soft and low;
Though dropping, as the manna fell,
Unseen, yet from above,
Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well,---
Thy Father's call of love!

Mistaken Identity and Other Holiday Happenings

We had a very special houseguest for Christmas, as I mentioned in another post around here somewhere. We knew him when he was a child, and we're very proud of how he's turning out. He claims that we were a wonderful influence on him, but the truth is he was open to receiving what we had to say. I know it had more to do with him than us, because we cared for his brother, too, and his brother is not living the life he should and he never was interested in doing so. We were responsible for doing what we could, and we tried, but the boys were responsible for what they did with it. Kind of like life. People will do the wrong things and we can't stop them, but that does not absolve us of any responsibilities or obligations to do what we can.

We went to the grandparents for Christmas Eve dinner, where we sang carols, opened a present or two, and ate delicious roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes and parsnips, and Granny Tea's delicious home-made rolls and pickles.

We had a wild time during our guest's short visit- playing newspaper, Bible Outburst (where my opponents unscrupulously refused to accept my answer of 'those things for the something' in place of silver vessels), Apples to Apples, rides on my parents' golf cart, cooking, eating, more eating, lots and lots and lots of singing, guitar playing, he kindly let our son try to wrestle with him (he's around 6 ft and big guy), present wrapping parties, and fierce arguments about the care and training of dogs, children, siblings, co-workers, politics, and the proper washing of dishes. He's just a part of the family, you see, and there's an awful lot of Irish on my husband's side of the family.;-)


We really live in a strange era. Christmas morning The FYG wanted to set her alarm clock and get everybody up at 6:30, but the HG said that was a break with tradition, as the FYG would see the 'new' presents under the tree We always put out new presents after the kids have gone to bed, even though we don't do Santa. My brothers and I agree the worst Christmas ever was the year the parents did not put anything new under the tree Christmas Eve. I think I was in my late teens) And 'new' presents means new-to-us. Almost our entire Christmas comes from a thrift shop. Did I mention we're a bit odd? Do I need to? So.... we handed our 11 y.o. a cell phone (my mother recently gave us three phones on her cell phone plan and before Mom did that,a dear friend gave us an extra on HER plan for emergency use) and she was allowed to call everybody on their respective cell-phones and the land-line to wake us up. Yes, we're a little nuts.
Christmas Day we got up at 6:30, opened presents, drank coffee, ate oatmeal casserole, tidied up a small bit, played games, had the Grandparents over for snacks and visiting, and played more games.
I'll share Pip's description of their Christmas Day game of Newspaper:

It's one of those games where you don't need much to play it. Everyone sits in chairs placed in a circular position (more or less), except for the person who is IT. This person stands in the middle of the circle with a rolled up newspaper. IT calls out the name of a player, and then goes to tap them on the head with the newspaper (but not hard, okay, that's one of the RULES). The player whose name IT calls (player 1) tries to yell out another player's name (player 2) before he gets tapped. If Player 1 calls the name out before he gets hit, then IT goes to tap Player 2. Player 2 calls out the name of any other player in the circle (except IT), and it continues like that. If the player doesn't call out another name before he gets hit, then he becomes IT and the former IT takes Player 2's place.
The game continues as long as everybody's having fun.

So, I and a few members of my family were playing it with our houseguest....

So... my little brother was bearing down on one of my sisters (The Headgirl) with newspaper in hand. She was stuttering frantically to think of a name, and suddenly one came to her...

"FRED!"

she let out. Little brother stopped stock still in confusion. Fred, what Fred? Surely she was joking? *Nobody* in this family is named Fred, our house guest's name is *not* Fred, and in fact, I don't think I even KNOW a Fred. But no, she had indeed said Fred and at the moment it passed her lips, she was *not* joking. she realized the absurdity of what she said AFTER it left her lips, but she wasn't joking WHEN she said it.

We, of course, continued with our game, teasing her inbetween our turns to frantically search for a name. But then... my little sister said Fred, too! And she also was NOT joking, and apparently not thinking.

Then, it came again. Someone was bearing down on the Headgirl with newspaper in hand and she was forcing her tired wiped out brain to think of a name. And, it did...

"GEORGE!"

Umm. At least we know someone named George, and her brain could have possibly got the connection of Fred and George Weasley, because we were saying Fred constantly. But still...

WHERE did Fred come from??? :-D

Some things are just destined to remain a mystery. We still do not know. The George we know? HE lives in another state and we haven't seen him for months. We, I guess, live in a permanent state of confusion. I did not play Newspaper, in case anybody is wondering, because I have noticed that the children never can remember not to hit too hard. So I took a nap during this game because I had been up later than anybody on Christmas Eve, it being my task to do the stockings, and I do love the Christmas Stockings best of all.

Our houseguest had to leave to go back to work on Christmas day, so he drove off about 2:00 in the afternoon, leaving us all feeling sadly let down and flat. We went back in the house and cleaned the kitchen and living room, and then some of us took naps and some of us unscrupulously read the Michael Innes mystery we had given to the HG in her Christmas Stocking.

My husband took Pip and the FYG with him to work in another town this morning. They will be back Saturday night. Y'all could pray they have a safe trip. His car has no brakes so it's home in the driveway. He took the car our eldest two girls drive- it has over 200,000 miles on it AND it broke down last night and had belts and things replaced this morning before they left. I miss them already, and they've only been gone about twenty minutes. The HG is working all day, so that means there are three Progeny at home, and the house is ghostly quiet. Isn't that weird?

I packed some schoolwork for the FYG girl to take with her, leaving it up to Pip what schoolwork she should take (except I did specify she had to take along some math). FYG is 11 years old. She packed some things of her own, too, including a portable tape player that is literally some 20 years old (poor thing, she wakes up her family by cell phone, but has no Mp3 Player) and some tapes. I am very pleased to report that these are the tapes she chose with no input whatsoever from me:
an Adventures in Odyssey set she got for Christmas; Anne Murray's Christmas favorites; Dvorak. I am so pleased that she demonstrated such eclectic taste- and that eclecticism is demonstrated by the chronology of her choices rather than the style. The 'style' of anything post 1900 is about the same, really- all pop. But you know how I feel about that.

Sometime this last week my dad called here and asked for Mike. My husband's name is not Mike. My son's name is not Mike. Our houseguest is not named Mike. I think it was the HG who answered, and she figured Dad had done the sort of thing I do, accidentally called our number when he meant to call someplace else, like the local garage or something. So she just said, "You've called our house by mistake." No, he said, he hadn't. Our house was the place he meant to call, and he wanted to talk to... and there was a pause as that horribly embarrassing thing happened where the name he wanted just would not come to him.
Finally he said in some exasperation, "You know who I mean- that guy with all those kids!"
"Oh, him. Daddy's not home."

I think that sounds pretty good, so that's what I'm calling my husband these days, as in, "You! That guy with all those kids! I love you!"

Only, should it be capitalized? That Guy With All Those Kids? I mean, since it is his new first name and all.

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas, if you celebrated Christmas, and a very nice December 25th even if you don't.=)

Carnival of the Recipes!

Check out the Holiday Memories Edition of the Recipe Carnival

Looks great!!

Next week, the Carnival of the Recipes will be hosted by World Famous Recipes (http://www.worldfamousrecipes.org). The theme is New Year's Traditions and Treats. Send in your favorite New Year's recipe to recipe.carnival@gmail.com by noon CST on Saturday.

Christmas Eve is here

- which means I'm just now finishing up some Christmas wrapping. Oh well. Now there's less time for the recipients to shake them, poke them, prod at them, and otherwise manhandle them whilst trying to figure out their contents. Ha. I'm sure that's really what my subconscious was thinking in the last couple of weeks while I procrastinated about this.

Merry Christmas!

Vintage card found at the Rattery

When Daddy Lights the Tree

We have our share of ups and downs,
Our cares like other folk;
The pocketbook is sometimes full,
We're sometimes well nigh broke;
But once a year, at Christmas time,
Our hearth is bright to see;
The baby's hand just touches heaven
When Daddy lights the tree.
For weeks and weeks the little ones
Have lotted on this hour;
And mother, she has planned for it
Since summer's sun and shower.
With here a nickel, there a dime,
Put by where none should see,
A loving hoard against the night
When Daddy lights the tree.
The tiny tapers glow like stars;
They mind us of the flame
That rifted once the steel-blue sky
The morn the Christ-child came;
The blessed angels sang to earth
Above that far countree [sic]--
We think they sing above our hearth
When Daddy lights the tree.

The wee-est kid in mother's arms
Laughs out and claps her hands,
The rest of us on tip toe wait;
The grown-up brother stands
Where he can reach the topmost branch,
Our Santa Claus to be,
In that sweet hour of breathless joy
When Daddy lights the tree.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *

'Tis Love that makes the world go round,
'Tis Love that lightens toil,
'Tis Love that lays up treasure which
Nor moth nor rust can spoil;
And Love is in our humble home,
In largess full and free,
We all are very close to heaven
When Daddy lights the tree.

We pray that little orphaned ones
May have some share of bliss,
Nor when the Yule-tide fires burn
Their bit of gladness miss;
From our rich store we're fain to send
Wher'er such children be
A present as from friend to friend
When Daddy lights the tree.

~Margaret E. Sangster

DULCE DOMUM

At last the Rat succeeded in decoying him to the table, and had just
got seriously to work with the sardine-opener when sounds were heard
from the fore-court without--sounds like the scuffling of small feet
in the gravel and a confused murmur of tiny voices, while broken
sentences reached them--'Now, all in a line--hold the lantern up a
bit, Tommy--clear your throats first--no coughing after I say one,
two, three.--Where's young Bill?--Here, come on, do, we're all
a-waiting----'

'What's up?' inquired the Rat, pausing in his labours.

'I think it must be the field-mice,' replied the Mole, with a touch of
pride in his manner.  'They go round carol-singing regularly at this
time of the year.  They're quite an institution in these parts.  And
they never pass me over--they come to Mole End last of all; and I used
to give them hot drinks, and supper too sometimes, when I could afford
it.  It will be like old times to hear them again.'

'Let's have a look at them!' cried the Rat, jumping up and running to
the door.

It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when
they flung the door open.  In the fore-court, lit by the dim rays of a
horn lantern, some eight or ten little fieldmice stood in a
semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their
fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for
warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other,
sniggering a little, sniffing and applying coat-sleeves a good deal.
As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was
just saying, 'Now then, one, two, three!' and forthwith their shrill
little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols
that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by
frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be
sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.


CAROL

Villagers all, this frosty tide, Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may follow, and snow beside, Yet draw us in by your fire
to bide; Joy shall be yours in the morning!

Here we stand in the cold and the sleet, Blowing fingers and stamping
feet, Come from far away you to greet--You by the fire and we in the
street--Bidding you joy in the morning!

For ere one half of the night was gone, Sudden a star has led us on,
Raining bliss and benison--Bliss to-morrow and more anon, Joy for
every morning!

Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow--Saw the star o'er a stable
low; Mary she might not further go--Welcome thatch, and litter below!
Joy was hers in the morning!

And then they heard the angels tell 'Who were the first to cry NOWELL?
Animals all, as it befell, In the stable where they did dwell! Joy
shall be theirs in the morning!'


The voices ceased, the singers, bashful but smiling, exchanged
sidelong glances, and silence succeeded--but for a moment only. Then,
from up above and far away, down the tunnel they had so lately
travelled was borne to their ears in a faint musical hum the sound of
distant bells ringing a joyful and clangorous peal.

'Very well sung, boys!' cried the Rat heartily.  'And now come along
in, all of you, and warm yourselves by the fire, and have something
hot!'
From The Wind in the Willows, chapter 5

Sunday Hymn(s) Post

"All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made." John 1:3

He was born
To die on Calvary
To redeem our lost humanity
Conquering death
He rose triumphantly
Now He reigns for all eternity.
(youth group descant to Jesus is Lord)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: GOD was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed in the world, received up into glory."
1 Timothy 3:16

1. Hark! the Herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King,
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinner reconciled.

Chorus
Hark! the Herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.

2. Joyful all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies,
With the angelic host proclaim,
Christ is born in Bethlehem.
Chorus

3. Christ by highest Heaven adored,
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a Virgin's womb.
Chorus

4. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail the Incarnate Deity,
Pleased as Man with man to dwell;
Jesus, Our Emmanuel!
Chorus

5. Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Chorus
6. Risen with healing in His wings,
Light and life to all He brings,
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace.
Chorus
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour." Isaiah 43:11

Ah! Lord God, the world’s Creator,
King of all, great or small,
Earth’s Regenerator;
Art Thou cradled, art Thou crying,
Swathed and bound, on the ground,
In the stable lying?

“Love of man hath brought Me hither,
Cords of love, from above,
To exalt him thither;
Dead in trespass, child, I sought thee;
Gone astray, from My way,
Life and pardon brought thee.”

“Empty be My scrip and coffer,
Yet ’tis wealth, plenty, health,
I am come to offer;
Haste I to enrich and dress thee;
Born to die, low I lie,
And would gladly bless thee.”

Therefore thousand thousand praises
Are Thy due, Babe Jesu,
These my heart upraises;
Angels, mortals, furthest, nighest,
Sing in mirth, “Peace on earth,
Glory in the highest.”

Cyberhymnal

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
[B]y him (Jesus) were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth...all things were created by him, and for him. Colossians 1:16

All wise, all good, almighty Lord,
Jesus, by highest Heav’n adored,
Ere time its course began;
How did Thy glorious mercy stoop,
To take Thy fallen children up,
When Thou Thyself wert man?

Th’eternal God from Heav’n came down;
The King of glory dropped His crown
And veiled His majesty;
Emptied of all but love He came,
Jesus, I call Thee by the Name,
Thy pity bore for me.

O holy Child, still let Thy birth
Bring peace to us poor worms of earth,
And praise to God on high!
Come, Thou who didst my flesh assume;
Now to the abject sinner come,
And in a manger lie.

Didst Thou not in person join
The natures human and divine,
That God and man might be
Henceforth inseparably one?
Haste then and make Thy nature known
Incarnated in me.

In my weak, sinful flesh appear,
O God, be manifested here,
Peace, righteousness and joy;
Thy kingdom, Lord, set up within
My faithful heart; and all my sin,
The devil’s work, destroy.

Behold the great Creator makes
Himself a house of clay,
A robe of virgin flesh He takes
Which He will wear for ay.

Hark, hark, the wise eternal Word,
Like a weak infant cries!
In form of servant is the Lord,
And God in cradles lies.

This wonder struck the world amazed,
It shook the starry frame;
Squadrons of spirits stood and gazed,
Then down in troops they came.

Glad shepherds ran to view this sight;
A choir of angels sings,
And eastern sages with delight
Adore this King of kings.

Join then, all hearts that are not stone,
And all our voices prove,
To celebrate this holy One
The God of peace and love.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God
...the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us...John 1:1, 14

I know not how that Bethlehem’s Babe
Could in the Godhead be;
I only know the manger Child
Has brought God’s life to me.

I know not how that Calvary’s cross
A world from sin could free;
I only know its matchless love
Has brought God’s love to me.

I know not how that Joseph’s tomb
Could solve death’s mystery;
I only know a living Christ,
Our immortality.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
I am the first and the last...
God, Is. 41:4; Jesus, Revelation 1:17

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
Hark! all the tribes Hosanna cry;
O Savior meek, pursue Thy road
With palms and scattered garments strowed.

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die!
O Christ! Thy triumph now begin
Over captive death and conquered sin.

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
The wingèd squadrons of the sky
Look down with sad and wondering eyes
To see the approaching sacrifice.

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh;
The Father, on His sapphire throne,
Expects His own anointed Son.

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
Bow Thy meek head to mortal pain,
Then take, O God, Thy power, and reign.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 1 John 3:16

Day of God, thou blessèd day,
At thy dawn the grave gave way
To the power of Him within,
Who had, sinless, bled for sin.

Thine the radiance to illume
First, for man, the dismal tomb,
When its bars their weakness owned,
There revealing death dethroned.

Then the Sun of righteousness
Rose, a darkened world to bless,
Bringing up from mortal night
Immortality and light.

Day of glory, day of power,
Sacred be thine every hour:
Emblem, earnest, of the rest
That remaineth for the blest.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Colossians 2: 8,9

Object of all our knowledge here,
Our one Desire, and Hope below,
Jesus, the Crucified, draw near,
And with Thy sad disciples go:
Our thoughts and words to Thee are known,
We commune of Thyself alone.

How can it be, our reason cries,
That God should leave His throne above?
Is it for man th’Immortal dies?
For man, who tramples on His love?
For man, who nailed Him to the tree?
O Love! O God! He dies for me!


Thee, the great Prophet sent from God,
Mighty in deed and word we own;
Thou hast on some the grace bestowed,
Thy rising in their hearts made known;
They publish Thee to life restored,
Attesting they have seen the Lord.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6

Ye watchers and ye holy ones,
Bright seraphs, cherubim and thrones,
Raise the glad strain, Alleluia!
Cry out, dominions, princedoms, powers,
Virtues, archangels, angels’ choirs:

Refrain

Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia!

O higher than the cherubim,
More glorious than the seraphim,
Lead their praises, Alleluia!
Thou bearer of th’eternal Word,
Most gracious, magnify the Lord.

Refrain

Respond, ye souls in endless rest,
Ye patriarchs and prophets blest,
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Ye holy twelve, ye martyrs strong,
All saints triumphant, raise the song.

Refrain

O friends, in gladness let us sing,
Supernal anthems echoing,
Alleluia! Alleluia!
To God the Father, God the Son,
And God the Spirit, Three in One.

Refrain

Rocking horses.

Some of mother's rocking horses along with a tiny portion of the vintage book collection, in a secretary in the living room. The light kept on bouncing off of the glass windows, so the picture didn't turn out too well.

Telephones

Our visitor used to sell cell phones. He tells us that this month is the first time that cell phones outnumber landlines in the U.S. We've been thinking of getting rid of our landline and going to cell phones, but can't make up our minds.

Anybody else? Pros, cons? Have you eliminated the land line? If not, why not; if so, why?

Latest Houseguest

Years ago when all the Progeny were younger, much younger, and in fact, there were only five of them, we lived just past where the sidewalks ended in a small town in Nebraska. At our small church there was a single mother of two boys, the older of the two a year older than the HG, the younger slightly younger than the Equuschick. She was single through no fault or desire of her own, and she struggled valiantly to provide those boys what they needed in the way of nurturing, sustenance, education, and spiritual things.

One year the boys had some very negative experiences at school, and she tried to homeschool them. There was one other homeschooling family at church in addition to my family, and we helped out as we could. She had to work, so what we did was provide free 'day-care' during the day, supervision for their homework, and include them in our own homeschooling activities. She homeschooled them when she got home from work. The other family also lived in our tiny town, and we took turns, one month the boys would stay with us, the next month they would go to the other family's house. She insisted on paying something for their care anyway, after all, she said, they are boys and they do eat.

We only did this one year- she found the homeschooling after work too stressful (her day job was working with some of the most difficult children at the state school for the visually impaired), and there was a change in the circumstances that led her to homeschool in the first place, so the boys went back to public school.


The younger of the two boys, well, we loved him and love him still, but I always felt like I failed him somehow- we were not, for some reason, able to connect or develop a relationship with him as we would have wished. He tolerated us. The older of the two boys remained a close friend of the family, like one of our own, or at least a nephew (after all, the boys had and have a perfectly wonderful mother).

He grew up, joined the Army in spite of all the Headmaster could say or do, went to Iraq, among other places, was shot at, was close enough to explosions that dirt and debris fell on him, worried us and probably all his friends and relations, and sometimes we were more worried for his soul than for his life. Many was the time both the HG and I awoke in the middle of the night from a nightmare where the unthinkable happened and we prayed ourselves back to sleep over him.

He finished his tour with the Army, admitted the HM was right and he should have joined the Air Force, went back to live in the same state as his father and went to school, and he just grew up, retaining all the qualities we love in him while continuing to add to his faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. He's such a person.=)

And he drove all night last night to come up and spend this pre-Christmas week with us. We've had a short musical interlude, singing, guitar playing, some piano. He had the Boy help him carry in his things from the car. He let the youngest two children carry up presents to put under the tree. He's over at the Grandparents' house now being shown their new golf cart and tromping through the mud with four of the Progeny (one dislikes mud, one is at work, and The Cherub is still asleep- does anybody else think of 'this little piggy?'). He's the big brother the Boy doesn't think he has. We little knew, a dozen years ago or so, what we were building when we offered some free babysitting to a friend in need what we would be gaining in return.
-----------

Updates here=)

Bless a Blogger

I have no idea if anybody is hanging around reading here this close to Christmas, but if you are, here's a chance to give a little gift of gratitude to blogs that have blessed you this week (whether you blog yourself or not), and bless the rest of us by passing on links to posts we might otherwise miss. Use the space below to leave a link to a post you think shouldn't be missed

Raising Boy

There are times when I do wonder what the good Lord was doing in giving us six daughters and then this one lone boy-child. Most families we know with more than one boy tell us they feel sorry for our Boy, and the ones who don't tell us probably do as well, they just don't say so.

And I worry that he'll get over-mothered, because his sisters are so fond of him, and yet such helpful, motherly girls (yes, even the Equuschick), and they want him to look well and behave properly and not disgrace us all.

But then there are times when he makes it quite clear that he has his own personality and he simply won't be squelched, buried in pink cotton fluff or drowned in tea parties.

Tonight Pip offered to read him a bedtime story, and he kindly agreed to let her do that very thing for him. We have perhaps twenty Christmas books that we put away with the Christmas things every January and don't take back out until after Thanksgiving, so we don't get tired of them. We've been reading one of those every day, and they figure large in the older Progeny's childhood memories. So, "How about a Christmas book?" suggested Pip.

"No, thank-you," said the Boy, politely but most firmly. "I am ready for something with some violence in it."

Christmas decorations.

Look at the great big cheerful bow on the lamp. So lovely. The gift wrapped things are Christmas books to be unwrapped and read so that one never knows which book is going to be read that night.

Parents and Children, Parents' Review article conc.

Every study, every line of thought, has its "guiding idea;" therefore, the study of a child makes for living education, as it is quickened by the guiding idea "which stands at the head."

In a word, our much boasted 'infallible reason'––is it not the involuntary thought which follows the initial idea upon necessary logical lines? Given, the starting idea, and the conclusion may be predicated almost to a certainty. We get into the way of thinking such and such manner of thoughts, and of coming to such and such conclusions, ever further and further removed from the starting-point, but on the same lines. There is structural adaptation in the brain tissue to the manner of thoughts we think––a place and a way for them to run in.

Thus we see how the destiny of a life is shaped in the nursery, by the reverent naming of the Divine Name; by the light scoff at holy things; by the thought of duty the little child gets who is made to finish conscientiously his little task; by the hardness of heart that comes to the child who hears the faults or sorrows of others spoken of lightly.

Your children can understand you much sooner than you realize, too, so it certainly behooves us to watch what we say even before the little ones who aren't talking yet.

The Character of a man

The only thing that walks back from the tomb with the mourners and refuses to be buried is the character of a man. This is true. What a man is survives him. It can never be buried. -- J.R. Miller

I am putting a test together for work from "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" by John Maxwell. I found the above quote in it and have posted it elsewhere. I thought it may as well go here as well.

Hopefully not too controversial...

A couple of years ago I read A RETURN TO MODESTY: Discovering the Lost Virtue by Wendy Shalit (caution: cover is not that modest). It's an excellent book and one I want to re-read, although I think some of its points might prove too much information for a homeschooled student not in the very explicit word of a public high school.

One of the things Shalit talked about was how the pressure put on girls to be physically attractive causes serious issues of weak self-confidence and depression. This, in turn, causes depression to be thought of as a new norm instead of as a heartbreaking consequence of imposing weird standards on girls. One of my classmates gave a speech once on anti-depressants and asked if anyone in the room was on them. Half of the girls raised their hands. That made an impression on me, but I didn't think much about it again until recently.

Working at the library has been a really interesting experience. I envisioned myself checking books out to patrons, helping them find the sources they needed, and quieting down noisy 9 year olds. I do all that (although the only time the 9 yos are noisy is when they get in a fight over a computer game; mostly they're too zombied by the computer games to care about what goes on around them). What I wasn't expecting was the very up close and personal look at the lives of adolescents and teenagers that working at a small town library has given me. And it's saddening.

Seniors in high school talk about their severe depression and the time they had bulimia as casually as if they were talking about a stubbed toe. Ten year old girls (not adolescents, I know, in a normal world) wear make up and follow teenage boys around, boys with sick minds. Other teenage girls chat for hours online with boys they don't know, but who they really want to know, even while feigning indifference. I watched two girls sitting side-by-side at their computers while they had this conversation:
Girl 1: See, he's online, but he won't talk to me!
Girl 2: I'm chatting with him.... maybe he's just shy.
Girl 1: Tell him to talk to me!
...a couple minutes pass...
Girl 1: Well, I don't care. He's just a &*#! anyway.

Somewhere in this time period Girl 1's father came in to the library. They had an argument of sorts and he left, reminding her not to stay too long. She has ended up fighting angry tears before because her mother, in what has been a fairly consistent pattern, was supposed to pick her up at a certain time and didn't.

"I don't like your boyfriend," one girl told another, "he loses his temper over little things." Girl-with-the-boyfriend laughed and said, "Yeah, he has some anger issues."

Some anger issues?! And you're dating him why? My guess is that it's because you're in desperate need of any male attention and any sort of male commitment, even if it's with a guy who loses his temper over ridiculous things like someone throwing food at him while watching a football game.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a website entitled Girl Power; its goal is to "encourage and motivate 9-to 13-year-old girls to make the most of their lives." (Side Note: If anyone is able to find a comparable site for boys, please let me know.)

No wonder girls are confused and depressed. Hollywood standards are imposed on them by pop culture. Emotional neglect at home leads them to seek fulfillment somewhere else, anywhere else. Government attempts to compensate for this create an added level of pressure for girls: Hey, ten year old! You need to be more motivated to make the most of your life!

Little girls need daddies who will tell them they're beautiful right after they've gotten out of bed and have tousled heads and mismatching pajamas. They need daddies who frequently say silly, romantic things to their mothers. They need the men in their lives to step up to the plate and show respect.

Girls need mothers who do more than work to fit the Hollywood image. They need mothers who live a life full of activities that reach deeper than a layer of foundation and lip stick: who want to talk to their daughters about books they're reading, dishes they're cooking, and ideas they've had.

Girls do not need additional pressure to be gorgeous or to "make the most of their lives" when they're ten. Children, given the right tools and limitations (rare usage of computer and TV time, free time for developing their own activities balanced with time spent cultivating their minds), will naturally lead very busy lives.

Why are girls depressed? They're being forced to accept a world and standard that is not in their best interest. The answer is not in government GirlPower! campaigns. It lies with more parents loving their children and acting out this love.

Frugalities and Using the Internet

The key to making use of the internet in frugal living is to learn to narrow your searches.

Sometimes when I have a handful of ingredients on hand I google them to find a recipe to use them up- my google search might look like this:
cooked chicken sweet potatoes celery cups

One of these things is not like the other one.

I always include a unit of measurement such as I might find in a recipe, because otherwise I end up with too many links to online menus for restaurants and not enough actual recipes. And look at what came up! It looks quite interesting.
You can try stir, mix, combine, tablespoons, or some other cooking term as well. They'll all help narrow down the responses to those that include a recipe.

I came up with several interesting results for the above combination. There's a tasty looking pot pie with a sweet potato crust, and a sweet potato and chicken salad that can be served warm or cold, and that was just two of a dozen possibilities on the first page.

Likewise, if I am looking for a craft idea using up some odds and ends I have on hand, I will include something I expect I might find in the directions for a craft- words such as glue, paste, cut, stitch, or fold.
This additional wording cuts my search time down dramatically.
My weekly post is up at Frugal Hacks.

I've finished all the dolls!!!!

Stealing Childhood

The next time I read/hear somebody accusing those of us who don't do Santa of ruining our children's lives, of destroying 'childhood,' or some such variation on this theme, I think I will direct them to this series of photos.

Clearly, these children did not get the memo about Santa being one of the happiest aspects of childhood.;-)

But seriously, folks- who taught those children to be so afraid of Santa? Where did they learn it? 'Everybody knows' that children are not naturally prejudiced and they love everybody just the same no matter what. So why are they so frightened of the white beard and red suit?

These children did not learn to be afraid of strange men in white beards and red suits at home, at school, or anywhere else. Fear of the strange and unusual is innate. It's the parents' job to help their children overcome these fears, but it's not the parents' fault when children have them in the first place.

The Immortal C.S Lewis Strikes Again

“In my daydreams I was training myself to be a fool, in mapping and chronicling Animal-Land I was training myself to be a novelist."

And so said C.S Lewis of his childhood.


As a child, The Equuschick read this quote herself but most of it went over her head. Which is a pity, because had she fully understood what he was saying, she may have been motivated to put her childhood to better use.

An imagination, by itself, is a fun thing, but an idle one, without purpose or utility. A child whose time is spent in absorbed mental contemplation of an alternate universe will achieve an unremarkable adulthood, while the child who may not have imagined an alternate universe, but who did devote time and concentration to projects and tasks, will surpass all the other children who never bothered to map out their daydreams, however impressive these daydreams were.

This is because, as the same great man said, “Invention is essentially different from reverie.”

The Equuschick is reminded of another quote, from a far inferior author, but one that still struck home.

A young child asks an elder how best to achieve her goals in life, and the conversation goes like this:

"If you follow your dreams..."
"Yes?"
"And reach for the stars..."
Yes?"
"You will still get beaten by those people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy."
Terry Pratchett

One goal accomplished is worth a thousand dreams, and one good habit is worth a thousand theories.

Christmassy Candles.

Some more of our Christmas decorations on a coffee table by the couch. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see a very small part of mother's rocking horse collection in the secretary in the background.

Lakota Tribe are no longer part of the melting pot

According to FOXNEWS the new country would issue its own passports and driving licenses, and living there would be tax-free - provided residents renounce their U.S. citizenship, Mr Means said.

"One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples — despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws."

Here is a GOOGLE map of the Lakota Tribe's location.

Parents and Children, continued

The last installment of this article is here. It is taken from the 1891/2 edition of The Parents' Review, a magazine published and edited by Charlotte Mason until her death. Miss Mason is writing here of ideas and their importance in education.

Let us now hear Coleridge* on the subject of those definite ideas which are not inhaled, as air; but conveyed, as meat, to the mind:––

"From the first, or initiative idea, as from a seed, successive ideas germinate."

"Events and images, the lively and spirit-stirring machinery of the external world, are like light, and air, and moisture to the seed of the mind, which would else rot and perish"

"The paths in which we may pursue a methodical course are manifold, and at the head of each stands its peculiar and guiding idea."

"Those ideas are as regularly subordinate in dignity as the paths to which they point are various and eccentric in direction. The world has suffered much, in modern times, from a subversion of the natural and necessary order of Science . . . from summoning reason and faith to the bar of that limited physical experience to which, by the true laws or method, they owe no obedience."

"Progress follows the path of the idea from which it sets out; requiring, however, a constant wakefulness of mind to keep it within the due limits of its course. Hence the orbits of thought, so to speak, must differ among themselves as the initiative ideas differ."

Have we not here the corollary to, and the explanation of, that law of unconscious cerebration which results in our "ways of thinking," which shapes our character, rules our destiny? Thoughtful minds consider that the new light which biology is throwing upon the laws of mind is bringing to the front once more the Platonic doctrine, that "An idea is a distinguishable power, self-affirmed, and seen in its unity with the Eternal Essence."

The whole subject is profound, but as practical as it is profound. We must disabuse our minds of the theory that the functions of education are, in the main, gymnastic. In the early years of the child's life it makes, perhaps, little apparent difference whether his parents start with the notion that to educate is to fill a receptacle, inscribe a tablet, mould plastic matter, or, nourish a life; but in the end we shall find that only those ideas which have fed his life are taken into the being of the child; all the rest is thrown away, or worse, is like sawdust in the system, an impediment and an injury to the vital processes.

Emphasis mine. What would be the difference between an education designed to fill a bucket and one designed to nourish a life? Look at your methods and practices at home, your educational tools, the information you have chosen to impart and the way you have chosen to impart it. Does it look like you believe you are shaping clay or nourishing a life? What ideas, if any, are you feeding your child, setting before him in the great buffet of life?

This is, perhaps, how the educational formula should run: Education is a life; that life is sustained on ideas; ideas are of spiritual origin; but,

'God has made us so'

that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another. The duty of parents is to sustain a child's inner life with ideas as they sustain his body with food. The child is an eclectic; he may choose this or that; therefore, in the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not which shall prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.

The child has affinities with evil as well as with good; therefore, hedge him about from any chance lodgment of evil suggestion.

The initial idea begets subsequent ideas; therefore, take care that children get right primary ideas on the great relations and duties of life.

Ideas have consequences.

*Method.

On our bathroom door.

This door leads to the bathroom off of the living room, and this fellow has surprised a couple of us when we have caught a glance of him out of the corner of our eye just walking through the living room. He is really beautiful, though.

And another thing about my mother....

We took my parents to one of the two recitals our children were playing in this week. The children were all playing the same songs, but one of them wasn't in the second recital, and that was the longest one (90 minutes) and about an hour away. My parents, for obvious reasons, preferred to go to the shorter recital just fifteen minutes away. So did I, but as the Mother I did not have a choice.

Anyhow.... It was a dark and stormy night. Well, no, not stormy. Icy. Snow on the ground and lots of it. Cold. My folks met us at the bottom of their driveway where it meets the road so we wouldn't have to drive up their hill. Have I mentioned my dad is 70 years old? My mother is in her mid sixties.

As they were trying to climb into our 12 passenger van without a stool because Mother always refuses the stool because she's not old, Mother slipped. I have no idea how badly she hurt herself and nobody ever will know because that's the way she is, but I could tell she was in considerable pain. The grimaces, gritted teeth, blanched face, hyperventilating and faint voice were clues. She held onto the sides of the van for a few seconds trying to get her poise back, refusing all offers of help, yelping when my father tried to help anyway, and finally she painfully clawed her way- unaided- into the van.

All of us were solicitous, asking what we could do, what she needed, could we get the stool, was she okay, how could we help, was she hurt, etc, etc.

She insisted she was fine, she was not hurt, but she would be okay (my mother, she lies about these things). I finally said, in some resignation and much familiarity, "I guess she's okay, but she'd never tell us if she wasn't."

"-Weren't" interjected my mother, through pain-blanched lips, "That's the subjunctive mood. That's contrary to fact, and when it's contrary to fact you use 'were.'

As she talked, the color slowly returned to her face, and I stopped worrying that she was going to faint. I was so glad to be able to provide a strong enough distraction to my mother that she was able to take her mind off her probably broken knee-cap and focus on more important things like my grammar (or lack thereof). Because, of course you all realize that I totally knew that and could not possibly have committed such a gross outrage on the English Language for any other reason. The sacrifices I make for my mother.=)


Oh. Um, HI, MOM! I LOVE YOU!!

Spunky's Back!

Okay, okay, not for good. But she had put up a couple of posts at her old website- information about Mike Huckabee and whether he is or isn't the homeschooling community's dream candidate.


As always, the comment section to Spunky's posts are as informative as the posts.

Thanks to Dana for pointing out Spunky's return.

Home-made gift ideas

Save smallish jars with nice shapes (Mason jars, mustard jars, etc. Ketchup bottles, not so much)

Cut out pretty pictures from old picture books or small desk calendars. Magazines don't work as well here because the back of the magazine is not blank and the paper is too thin.

Decorate the jar with the pictures- paint the space that will be covered with teh picture with a mixture of glue and water. Paste the picture down and then cover it completely with another thin layer of glue thinned with a bit of water.

Cover the lid with fabric or similar pictures. Cut out a label or use a pen that can write directly on glass and label the jar with the ingredients (or make a tag and tie it on with a bit of ribbon).

Ingredients:


Buttermilk Bath Salts
1 cup Buttermilk Powder
1 cup Sea Salt
Add up to 24 drops of essential oils.
Blend well, keep in a sealed jar.
Use 1/2 cup per bath. This makes enough for 4 baths.

Simple Bath Salts
# 1 cup Sea Salt
# 1 cup Epsom Salt
# 1 cup Baking Soda
# Your favorite essential oils, about 12 drops of each kind.
I like a mixture of orange and lavendar, or lemon and orange, or rose and bergomot.
# Use 1/4 cup per bath. This makes enough for several baths.


You can grate a tube of cocoa butter and add it to the mixture.

Save your candle ends and bits and pieces of wax. Put them in a glass pie pan, or a disposable aluminum pie pan (put this inside a glass pie pan to keep it from leaking. Melt this in the oven, stir in some essential oils and let cool just until it's still soft. Use cookie cutters and place in the soft wax. Leave there. When the wax hardens you can remove the cookie cutter and you will have several lovely shapes in wax. Now wrap the shapes in cheesecloth and put a few more drops of essential oil on the cloth. Put the shapes in plastic bags and let them soak in more scent for a week. Remove the cheesecloth, attach a ribbon hanger to the back of the shapes or just put two or three in a pretty little basket or dish. These are like potpourri.

Other ideas at Works for Me Wednesday

Traditions

The Christmas villages Pip has been posting (there is third one, and a traditional log house made of lincoln logs, and a doll castle made of waffle blocks, and a couple odd houses put up on table tops and bookcases here and there) are a Tradition. I little knew what I had begun 21 years ago when I built the first lincoln log Christmas house. We never purchased a 'set' of carefully matched pieces from the same company. They are composed of odds and ends found at end of Christmas sales, yard sales in July, and thrift shops (and sometimes given to me as gifts). Most Christmases we take two days putting it up, sketching out roads and a map of the town on cardboard, then covering the cardboard (except for the spots where houses and roads go) with some homemade version of snow. We've used half a dozen kinds of homemade playdough and glitter, toilet paper paper mache, spray paint, glue and shredded white plastic, and some (probably toxic) vintage flocking from the thrift shop. One year I thought enough was enough and suggested that we not do it again. I thought the children were as tired of the work as I was. I was wrong. They waxed indignant and there was weeping and wailing and pleadings, "No, no! It's Tradition! We have to do the Christmas Village!"

And so we do.

I've mentioned that we have a real tree because I came to the marriage insisting that was the only way to do Christmas. And when I saw the error of my ways and suggested we get a fake tree, my husband and my children insisted we could not have Christmas with a fake tree, we had to keep on using a real tree every year.

And so we do.

We listen to a lot of Christmas music and we have many, many CDS and tapes. Every year we try to make a list of our favorites, and every year we have a very hard time with that. Except for one. The FYG always requests that we include her vote for Elvis' Christmas Album, and the elder four of The Progeny attempt to both suppress and repress her. We often support the rights of the underdog, so we always the FYG's choice a nod, however ill judged that might be. Besides, the Headmaster and I reserve the right to be the chief repressors here, and we feel any attempts at the usurpation of our rights and power must suppressed immediately. And, um, it's tradition, and so we do listen to Elvis and his Blue Christmas at least once, and even though the elder Progeny turn up their noses they will join in on the chorus of 'whoo woo woo whoooo whooos' and even ad lib those verses themselves without accompaniment by the King of Rock and Roll.

Speaking of ill-judged and Elvis Presley in the same paragraph brings to mind a little tip I have passed on before and wish to pass on again to newish parents.

Children are traditionalists. They put more stock in tradition than the eldest and most conservative of elderly conservatives. Children are also rather quick to label anything as a 'tradition.' Keep these little data points in mind and never, ever, ever do anything during a holiday or birthday or other 'occasion' that you do not want to do again. And again. And again. Every year. For the rest of your life.
Of course, if your child is older than three, it's already too late, and you too may find that Elvis' Christmas Album has suddenly morphed from a frivolous bit of fun one December into a genuine Tradition. You Have Been Warned.

I have a plan, though. I have told them that if or when each of them leave home, I am giving them their share of the Christmas Village. This way, by the time we have only the Cherub left, we shall have just one small house, and she and I can handle that.

12 CDs of Christmas

We have, as we have mentioned, a strict ban on Christmas music until midnight Thanksgiving Day. We play Christmas music like mad until January 6th, and then we actually pack the Christmas music, books, and movies up with the Christmas village, tree, and other decorations (unless I've packed the tree up beforehand).


As the HG puts it, "The day after Thanksgiving we end the ban on Christmas music. Now we can indulge in musical gluttony until January 6; and we do. :)"

Here are some favorites (keep in mind that we do not celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, so there are some secular things here. Keep in mind that we still like traditional religious Christmas music, so there's some of that, too. Keep in mind that we're an inconsistent eclectic bunch):


1. Trans Siberian Orchestra, Christmas Evening and Other Stories

2. Christmas by Mannheim Steamroller

3. FreshAire Christmas by Mannheim Steamroller

4. The Holly & The Ivy, The Clare College Choir of Cambridge, with John Rutter

5. The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky.- we are not discriminating here. WE love nearly every version we've ever heard. Of course, the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies is good and is heard everywhere, but the ballet includes many other lovely sections that should be heard. The FYB recently participated in his first recital and his music teacher gives gifts to all her students. She gave him a new CD of Tchaikovsky's music, and he was very tickled indeed. We had to put it in the CD player as soon as we got home.


6. Andre Rieu, The Christmas I Love

7. One Wintry NIght, Jerry Read Smith and Lisa Maria Smith

8. Carol of the Drum, a New Age Christmas

9. Bright Day STar, Music for the Yuletide Season by The Baltimore Console

10. A Classic Christmas, including Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Sleigh Ride and many others. I suspect this one is a favorite only because we have owned it since 1987. It was on the Proart label, and we've had it so long the cover has long since disappeared.

11. The irreplacable, must have, A Child's Christmas in Wales, read aloud by the author himself in his rich, plummy, (and somewhat rummy) accent, Dylan Thomas. You can read it here, and you can read about it here, but you have to hear Dylan Thomas to really appreciate it. We've owned our copy for as long as we've had a C.D. player.

12. Charlotte Church's Dream a Dream. We've had this one four or five years. Charlotte has a lovely voice, of course, and you can buy it through Amazon and put a few cents in our Christmas stocking, but what you can't get and money cannot buy is the experience of listing to Charlotte accompanied by three of the Progeny while they do dishes. 'Ding Dong Merrily on High' and 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' are popular dish washing tunes, and the FYG may do the impossible this year and make everybody tired of Winter Wonderland.


That's just the CD's, and those are the favorites mentioned last year by the Progeny. I am also very, very fond of an old tape I have of vintage music boxes playing Christmas tunes, and I am sure the Progeny will be adding their latest choices soon.

A Firkin of Butter

THE BEAR and the Fox had once bought a firkin of butter together; they were to have it at Yule, and hid it till then under a thick spruce bush.... From Popular Tales of the Norse

"The following table will be useful to those of our readers who may at any time deal in the articles enumerated. Every farmer should paste this in his scrap book:

(The numbers represent pounds)

Firkin of butter.... 56
Barrel of flour.....196
barrel of pork.....200
Gallon of honey.....12
Cord of dry maple.....2862
Barrel of potatoes.....200
barrel of gunpowder..... 200
barrel of fish.....56
quintal of fish.....100
Cord of dry hickory.....4369
barrel of onions.....112
Barrel of beef.....206
chest of tea.....68
bushel of charcoal.....30

Taken from: The Crown Book of the Beautiful, the Wonderful and the Wise: Being a Compilation of Some of the Most Notable Things in Poetic Literature, in Science and in Art, in History and Biography, in Earth, Sea and Sky, in Philosophy and Music. by L. N. Chapin, 1890.

CONTENTS: Introduction by Thomas Chase, M. A. LL.D (Harvard); The Best Poems, Old Favorites and New; Some Notable Works of Man; Some Notable Things in History and Biography; Some Notable Things in Nature, including the Reigning Beauties of the Sea, and Wonders in the Starry Heavens; The Best Department of All; Problems, Paradoxes, Puzzles, and Plays; Songs.

The Full and complete and total title: Crown Book of the Beautiful, the Wonderful and the Wise: Being a Compilation of Some of the Most Notable Things in Poetic Literature, in Science and in Art, in History and Biography, in Earth, Sea and Sky, in Philosophy and Music. Affording Much Information Not Often or Easily Obtainable, Words of Profound Sympathy for Some, Pure and Wholesome Entertainment for Others, and Profit in Abundance for All.

Looking this beautiful vintage book over, it seems to have been an early version of the bathroom books- full of odds and ends of trivia, poetry, songs, useful information, bits of trivia, riddles, and short bits of information similar to what you might find in an encyclopedia.

Joy, Joy, Joy in the morning...

... and if anyone can finish the Wodehouseian version of that quote, they get virtual chocolates of their choice. ;-)

I made A's in my three history classes and a B in my Spanish. This makes me very happy.

From JennyAnyDots- Making the Felt Dolls, step 1.

Get the Supplies:

Multiple colors of felt
Scissors
Clear craft glue
Paint (It really doesn't matter if the paint says it's for wood, cloth, indoor or outdoor; I've used them all :) )
Detail paintbrushes
Hair-colored yarn
Embroidery floss
Wooden dowels with a hole through one end
Styrofoam plate (I use these for mixing the paints)
Needles (I recommend spending money on embroidery needles; they have a larger eye-hole and hence are much easier to work with!)

The big village.

Not the best picture, but the lighting was bad in there. This village was set up by the FYG, FYB, and me. The waterfall (of which you can only see the "falling" part) was FYB's idea, and he was very proud of it. This is set up in the very COLD sunroom, but I must say it does look nice through the glass doors... all those pretty lights shining in.

homeschool carnival

Here is the latest blog carnival (I would tell you which edition if only I knew it). But first we have some business.

Or rather, we don't. Because the first order of business is that I left out a couple entries that were clearly nothing more than advertisements. I let a couple others slide because they at least seemed to have more homeschool related content, but I would hate to see the carnival high –jacked as a marketing tool. That would be counter productive as well, as I am sure I am not alone in saying a ‘homeschooling carnival’ consisting primarily of attempts to sell me something holds zero interest for me. There are a couple of businesses that have posted to the hsing carnival for some time, but they give value. That is, while they mention they have a product to sell, the post they submit to the carnival is useful, helpful, and interesting as it stands. The post is meaty enough- it’s not a weakly disguised commercial.

Second order of business – a blessing on the heads of all those who take an extra moment and use the blog carnival submission form at blogcarnival.com. It cuts the carnival hosts time down to a second per entry and does not require tedious cutting, copying, pasting, and rearranging. May your days go as smoothly as you made mine.

Third order of business: my ‘theme.’ Well, I had one. It wasn’t working. At the last moment I had to scrap it. I was hunting about for something else to try when Henry sent me the wrap up message. At the close of the carnival he stops the forwarding of blog entries to the host’s address (and this is why, dear procrastinators, some of you feel slighted when your post doesn’t go in the carnival. It gets forwarded to the host after the deadline, and the new host never even sees it- oops- updated to add- if Henry sees them, he does forward them to the next blog host so that it will be considered then). He also sends a handy little tool consisting of an alphabetized list of posts so you can check to make sure you have them all. The alphabetizing is odd, because it’s based on the name of the submitter, but I saw that and said aha and here we are- the abecedarian version of the carnival:

2 Savvy Homeschoolers presents Introducing Foreign Languages at an Early Age posted at Homeschooler Savvy.

As little by little the oak trees grow,
So little by little I'll try to know;
One of these days perhaps we'll see
The world will be the better for me
~Unknown

Activities Coordinator presents When in doubt, don't throw it out! posted at Life On The Planet (a post about keeping and saving records)

Adso of Melk points out, "No, Jayden, You're Not the Center of the Univerise" in a worthy rant about history and how she is taught.

Alasandra shares How I meet the founder of PEAK, in person for the first time, and how PEAK won the Mississippi Championship Tournament.
Alasandra also is running a homeschooling contest, and you still have several days to vote. See her sidebar for more information and be sure to vote (if your conscience permits).

Amy Grant asks In Pursuit of Proverbs 31 finds out what happens when lesson plans get in the way and a child actually shows some interest in a subject. Go to Toys R Us!


Andrea presents a heartfelt personal poem about why she started homeschooling her daughter in NFAHM: The Lost Files posted at Notes From A Homeschooling Mom.


April presents Need a last minute Christmas gift? Homeschoolers will love Gametap posted at Lunablog.net. She shares information on how, for just 59.00 a year, you can get access to over a 1000 computer games, many of them educational.

Be kind and be gentle to those who are old,
For dearer is kindness
And better than gold.
~Unknown

Barbara Frank presents An Easy and Worthwhile Writing Assignment
She says Xerox makes it very easy for you to turn a writing assignment for your children into a patriotic activity.

Cherish what is good and drive Evil thoughts and feelings far, For as sure as you're alive You will show for what you are. ~Phoebe Cary

Cate family at Why Homeschool post about how one of their daughters wants the 'school' experience in Kids do the strangest things
A couple of our girls wanted what they thought was the school experience back in the very early 90's. I gave it to them.=)


Celeste at The Life Without School Blog presents
Remembering the Butterflies. She says, "Looking back, this was the first in a long series of lessons about letting go and going with the flow. It was also the first hard lesson about keeping my own dreams and goals separate from those of my children."


ChristineMM presents Dealing With Naysayers About Your Decision To Homeschool posted at The Thinking Mother.

Christine Moers presents Proof that homeschooling stunts you socially posted at welcome to my brain.

Do not look for wrong and evil, - You will find them if you do; As you measure for your neighbor, He will measure back to you. - Alice Carey

Dana presents Huckabee and monolithic homeschoolers posted at Principled Discovery- a very interesting post. I linked to it already and am glad to link again.

Denise presents Christmas math puzzles and activities posted at Let's play math!.

Dolfin presents Building a Library posted at Lionden Landing.

Every gentle word you say
One dark spirit drives away;
Every gentle deed you do
One bright spirit brings to you.
~Virginia Harrison

Elisheva Levin presents Unschooling Marches On posted at Ragamuffin Studies.


e-Mom presents Does Christmas Have Any Teeth? posted at C h r y s a l i s.

Goodness shows in blushes bright,
Or in eyelids dropping down,
Like a violet from the light;
Badness, in a sneer or frown.

Phoebe Cary

Gary presents New Homeschool flavored search engine posted at HomeSchoolBuzz.com.
Henry Cate Our entry for the carnival - Here is our entry: Kids do the strangest things http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2007/12/kids-do .

Hearts like doors will ope with ease To very, very little keys, And don't forget that two are these; "I thank you" and "if you please." ~Unknown



HowToMe presents How to Make Lacing Cards, for Free posted at HowToMe.

Just for today! Let me no wrong or idle word Unthinking say, Put thou thy seal upon my lips Just for today! ~Canon Farrar

Jacque Dixon at Seeking Rest In The Ancient Paths reviews the HBoL
so does JOcelyn Dixon at A Pondering Heart

Judy Aron presents Standardized Testing Squelches School Fieldtrips - Yet Another Reason To Homeschool posted at Consent Of The Governed. More and more schools are cutting back on or eliminating field trips because they conflict with the testing demands currently in place. I’m sorry to see educational field trips go, but some schools obviously need some incentive to tighten their budgets. A few years ago we were unable to get into the matinee showing of the then new Disney movie Beauty and the Beast because our local school district booked the movie theatre for ‘school field trips’ every day that week.

Kind hearts are the gardens,
Kind thoughts are the roots,
Kind words are the flowers,
Kind deeds are the fruits."
Take care of your garden
And keep out the weeds,
Fill it with sunshine
Kind words and kind deeds

Katherine at No fighting, no biting! (the title of one our favorite early reader books), asks How homeschool friendly is Mike Huckabee?She says, "I am leery of this candidate for President for several reasons and one is that his words don't match his actions, homeschooling issues included."

Little children, you should seek
Rather to be good than wise,
For the thoughts you do not speak
Shine out in your cheeks and eyes.

~Unknown

Leticia Velasquez presents THE JESSE TREE posted at cause of our joy.

Lynn presents Winter Solstice posted at Homeschool 2.0.

Lynn (another Lynn) presents Free Christmas Notebooking Pages posted at Eclectic Education.

Make a little sunshine dear,
'Tis surely worth your while;
Make a little sunshine here,
Twill only cost a smile.
~R. K. B.

Mama Squirrel presents Taking stock in December posted at Dewey's Treehouse. (psst, unschoolers! It's not really a report card- more like Mama Squirrel's progress report of what is and is not working for her family)

Matthew presents SAT Preparation: What to do on Test Day posted at SAT Exam Prep.- which I think is basically spam and the test prep is common sense.

Melissa at Melissa's Idea Garden says "This is a great site that offers Homeschoolers discounts on Microsoft products!": Homeschoolers, Educators and Students, Listen Up! Microsoft Discounts Are Available for You!

Miss Amanda Dixon at The Daily Planet gives an overview of homeschooling methods.: it's a very useful overview, but being the Charlotte Mason type I am, I am compelled to add this link to a CM tutorial I wrote a while back, and to say that Miss Mason did use textbooks. Here's a review I wrote of the various CM books I have read, and, of course, we have some, um, blush, 150 posts here at The Common Room with the CM label. There's also a CM carnival that I highly recommend.

Remember the old proverb says
That "pretty is which pretty does;"
That true worth neither goes nor stays
For poverty or splendor.

~Phoebe Cary

Rebecca presents Recycled Holiday Greeting Cards posted at Little Homeschool on the Prairie.

Renae presents Another Christmas Card to Send posted at Life Nurturing Education.

Robin at Heart of Wisdom says God Has a Plan for Your Homeschool
, saying, "We can homeschool with confidence because God is reliable. God promised to strengthen and equip us in every situation. Scheduling by faith parable."


Rose presents Dreaming of a Homemade Christmas posted at Learning at Home.

Speak the truth! 'Tis beautiful and brave;
Strong to bless and strong to save;
Falsehood is a coward knave;
Speak the truth.
~Unknown

Sol Lederman presents Flexagon fun for the whole family posted at Wild About Math!

Stephanie presents A Christmas Craft for Preschoolers posted at Stop the Ride!.

Summer presents Taking A Little Me Time posted at Mom Is Teaching.


Summer presents Homeschooling and Crafts posted at Mom Is Teaching.

True worth is in being, not seeming;
In doing each day that goes by,
Some little good; not in the dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.
~Alice Cary

Tea Party Girlhas a hard-to-classify and very good to read post in Why I Said ‘No’ So I Could Say ‘Yes’ posted at Tea Party Girl.

Unless you do the best you can
And do it every day,
No need to wish and hope and plan,
Your time is thrown away.
~ R.K.B.

An unschooling mom and a few friends answer the age, old homeschooling question, “What do my kids really need to know?" in General Knowledge posted at Life Without School

"Mark your Calendars -- and then post them on your blog! To get our new year started right, the January 8th edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling will feature practical examples of how homeschoolers organize their days, weeks, months, or years. The Red Sea School is hosting --see more ideas there."

Updated to fix some links, update some information, and add that the little poems starting with each letter of the alphabet I used come from the first year selections in Childs Calendar Beautiful, a book of poetry selected for recitation in public schools published in the 1900s. You can find more of these on our blog if you look for the Childs Calendar Beautiful tag.
---------------------
Updated again to note that there is another homeschooling carnival this month:
Sylvia at Pomoyemu will be hosting the next carnival, #104--it will not come out on Tuesday, Christmas Day, but on Wednesday the 26th.

She will accept homeschooling related posts on any homeschool related topics, but she would especially love to have stories or examples which show how homeschooling brings your family closer--nuclear and/or extended. What does homeschooling (not being tied to a school schedule, etc) make possible for your family that you'd miss out on otherwise? Maybe look back on your last 12 months of homeschooling, or even if you're a new homeschooler and started in September, and start thinking about what you'd like to tell us. She says she'd love posts with pictures, too.

Please use the Blogcarnival form to send in submissions, or use this email address: CarnivalOfHomeschooling at gmail.com. (the blog carnival form is much easier on the host, in my opinion). Please spread the word.

Victor Hugo quotes:

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.”

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”

“When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes”

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.”

“People do not lack strength; they lack will.”

“There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.”

Iran getting access to South America

As listed by the San Antonio Express Iran will plow across South America and have to access our eastern shore, western shore and of course straight north into Texas.

"As part of a new partnership with Nicaragua's Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, Iran and its Venezuelan allies plan to help finance a $350 million deep-water port at Monkey Point on the wild Caribbean shore, and then plow a connecting "dry canal" corridor of pipelines, rails and highways across the country to the populous Pacific Ocean. Iran recently established an embassy in Nicaragua's capital."

View Larger Map

Snowplow

This was a beautiful sight to see after a storm. We knew that if he was at our house, then the town must be okay!

Holiday Open House at Carnival of the Recipes!

The Christmas Edition of the Carnival of the Recipes is up, and paradoxically, the minimalist approach of this carnival makes the carnival one of the easiest to navigate ever.

Christmas decorations.

Our nutcracker display on top of the Lawyer's bookcase in the living room. My favorite is probably the mouse, which belongs to Jenny Any Dots. She is a little bit distressed at him becoming the wicked Mouse King, but he does look so good up there.

Sky & Paca

This is about 34 Meg, please let us know if these recent vids slow the uploads too much. I have tried to slowly progress in size to test it.




Note: the video is experiencing technical difficulties and the HM has gone outside to play in the snow with the youngest two Progeny. He says he'll look at it later and see if he can figure out the problem.

Politics and Homeschooling

Dana at Principled Discovery has a great post on Mike Huckabee and politics in the homeschooling community, as well as how we are perceived by those outside the homeschooling community. I haven't decided yet who gets my vote, and while a stand on homeschooling matters to me, it matters because it's an indication, a benchmark, of how that candidate understands the Constitution and the liberties we all should cherish, it's not my only question, and it's not as important to me as pro-life issues.

But anyway, this main-stream media assumption in particular caught my attention:

If Mr. and Mrs. Hurley have anything to say about it — and they do, being evangelical Christians who have imbued their children with the mandates of the Ten Commandments, not least the one about honoring thy father and mother — those will be five votes for Mike Huckabee.

Oh, really? My parents were/are committed conservative Christians who do believe that children should honor and obey their parents, and we certainly knew that we were expected to obey our parents, and I never even was told how they were voting. Maybe they have influence with their adult children because, oh, their adult children love and admire them, have reason to trust them? If influence was such a horrible thing, politicians would not seek endorsements, and, oh, newspapers would never offer them.

These aren't journalists, they are partisans, or mere gossip writers. Here's another quote:

No one interviewed for this story mentioned Mr. Romney’s Mormonism, which is considered a heretical branch of Christianity by most evangelical Christians; nor did anyone know about Mr. Huckabee’s remark, made in an interview for an article Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, asking, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”

Maybe nobody interviewed mentioned it because it doesn't matter to them as much as the reporter thinks it does. Was it irrelevant to politics? I don't know, for some people religious beliefs are relevant, and some of those people are atheists. I also think it's disingenuous of this reporter to bring up that question without at least mentioning that it is, in fact, bona-fide Mormon doctrine that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers.

Mrs. Hurley said that for most home-schooling families, the affinity with Mr. Huckabee transcended the issue of home schooling.

“We are about the pillar issues of our faith — family, marriage and abortion,” she said. “Home schooling is just part of it.”

In political terms, she said, “family and marriage” are expressed in opposition to same-sex marriage laws, opposition to broader rights for gay men and lesbians, and support for covenant marriage laws like the one signed by Mr. Huckabee as governor in 2001.

I know very few people who are actually opposed to 'broader rights for gay men and lesbians.' It would be more accurate to say Mrs. Hurley and company are opposed to special rights, particularly when those 'rights' are the sort that require a redefining of the institution of marriage as it has been understood from the dawn of time.

How much pressure would Mr. and Mrs. Hurley bring to get their children vote for their man?

“Oh, well, like most kids, you can’t tell these guys what to do,” said Mrs. Hurley, who then quickly began to tally her votes. “Let me see. Christy, Carl, Jim, Chuck Jr., Rebecca,” she said. “Is that five?” Pause. “And Christy’s husband. Six.”

Pressure would not be necessary. “We all believe in the same things,” she said.

"Pressure would not be necessary" seems to be a grossly inaccurate interpretation of Mrs. Hurley's words. She's already said that pressure would be ineffective. Her kids are likely to vote like their parents for the same reason that most people do. As Dana says:

According to Electoral Politics (1992), by David Kavanaugh, the father’s party preference is the single most influential factor in how a person will vote, regardless of class (p. 133).

HSLDA has endorsed Huckabee.*** (NOT HSLDA, but HSLDA-PAC)*** We are members of HSLDA, but that does not mean we will vote for him. In fact, it's quite possible that the five voting members of this household will end up voting for different candidates. The only thing I can be certain of in this election is that nobody here will be voting for Hillary, but not because I or the Headmaster forbade it (although he might, if his sense of humour strikes him that way)- but because we don't share her political outlook.

Make of that what you will, but I am reasonably certain you could find a number of liberal, pro-choice, anti-war, gay rights parents who could say, "Well, I can't tell my kids what to do, but they'll be voting for the same candidate I am. After all, we believe in the same things." If that reporter finds them (not that he'll be looking), he won't see anything insidious or newsworthy about it.

Updated for accuracy- it isn't HSLDA, but HSLDA's political action committee which endorsed Huckabee. The primary difference here is that one action would be illegal, and the other is legal.

Angel -- Kind of ;-)

I have not figured out how to rotate it, it is at an angle.
It is about 20 second, but I'd let it buffer first.

HomeSchool Blog Awards and Integrity

The votes are tallied, the results are in, and all the winners are posted up at Homeschool Blog Awards.

Thank-you all very much- we did win in both Best Variety and Best Family or Homeschool Blog Categories, and we are, of course, immensely gratified. We've asked if we can share duplicate prizes with our runner-up in Best Family Blog. Thank you all very, very much. I would love to write a funny acceptance speech, but I made the mistake of reading this one first and now I feel all inferior and stuff. I could not possibly be funnier than that. Maybe I can talk the Equuschick into trying.

I thought this was fun, how about you?=)

We were up against some stiff competition, and we had to deal with some handicaps that I have learned some of you do not share. Oh, yes. I figured this would be the case. I've grown up with this burden/blessing/curse/gift/woman, after all. But now I have some witnesses and written evidence in the form of this post by Dana at Principled Discovery. I had mentioned the relatively small number of voters in the HBA, and how this should be a firm reminder that this is just fun stuff and we should not take ourselves too seriously. Dana responded here, and she said:

Since I know for a fact that my husband, my mother, my father, my aunt and one of my mother’s coworkers voted for me, that means only 57 of my regular readers have offered a vote. I have more than 57 subscribers to this blog. And a lot more daily visitors. Meaning that either a large number of you have abstained…or [gasp] voted for someone else.

That's the written evidence. The witnesses? Yesterday at our house I was again pointing out that these awards, while fun and very nice (COOL prizes) should not make us get swollen heads because, after all, only around 70 people actually voted for us in Best Variety, and around 93 for Best Family (93.6 to be exact, but how that works I do not know).

"Oh," said my mother, anxious to reassure me, "But I think you probably have hundreds more readers than that, and of course, people like me didn't vote at all, because yours is the only blog I read regularly so it wouldn't be fair for me to have voted for you, since I don't read other blogs often enough to be able to say honestly that yours is the best."

And, y'all? I wasn't even surprised. I had already taken it for granted that she hadn't voted. I knew without being told, and I knew why. This is my mother. Scrupulous is her middle name, or at least one of them. A few others would be Miss Manners, Empress of Integrity, Slave to Duty, and More Principled Than the Pope. I think it's kind of funny that a woman who is so principled she couldn't even vote for her daughter (her only daughter, I might add) in a lighthearted blog contest like this thinks there are other, even hundreds of others, like her, because in 45 years of living I have never, ever met anybody with her code of conduct.

I wouldn't have her any other way.

Sunday Hymn Post

’TIS WINTER NOW, THE FALLEN SNOW

’Tis winter now; the fallen snow
Has left the heav’ns all coldly clear;
Through leafless boughs the sharp winds blow,
And all the earth lies dead and drear.

And yet God’s love is not withdrawn;
His life within the keen air breathes;
His beauty paints the crimson dawn,
And clothes the boughs with glittering wreaths.

And though abroad the sharp winds blow,
And skies are chill, and frosts are keen,
Home closer draws her circle now,
And warmer glows her light within.

O God! Who giv’st the winter’s cold
As well as summer’s joyous rays,
Us warmly in Thy love enfold,
And keep us through life’s wintry days.

Cyberhymnal info

B-2 MOVIE

I think it worked! Here is the first video loaded on "The Common Room"

Enoy

Thankful for our Armed Forces and what they do

This is a very well made youtube video. It is about being thankful for our military and what they do. Be aware, it will make you cry.

Quote for the Common Place Book

I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.

Charlotte Bronte

Crockpot Mexican Meat

In the crockpot (or in a freezer bag):

two or three pounds of chuck roast, rubbed about with freshly ground cumin and salt, and pepper to taste. (my 'roast' was about two inches thick, and I had to cut it into three pieces to fit in the crockpot)
One or two chopped onions
One can of diced tomatoes (about 14 ounces)
two cans jalepeno chiles (the 4 ounce cans(, diced
Garlic to taste

Cook on low for 10 to 12 hours (I did this and my roast was partially frozen and it was still done)

Serve on toasted buns with jack cheese, or in flour tortillas with peppers, cheese, salsa, and sour cream.

Omens? Or Just Bad Luck?

A couple weeks ago my dad hit a deer with his small pick up truck. It totaled the truck and deer, but the 70 year old driver walked away unscratched. The very next day my mother hit a deer. Her van was reparable, but needed a new headlight among other things.

When we got to music lessons Thursday we were just in time to see a towing company loading up the very damaged small car our piano teacher's teenaged driver drives. She hit a deer the day before. We narrowly missed one on the way home, and when we slowed down to avoid that deer, we saw a herd of about twenty come running through the cornfield to our right. We we stopped, they swerved into the woods. I think if we'd kept going all twenty of them were heading directly into our path.

Today we're expecting more ice and snow. The HG left to go to work and called five minutes later. She has a flat tire and is parked off the side of the road about a mile away. I know it's not self-sufficient of us, but none of us girls know how to change a tire, let alone the tire on a 12 passenger van (don't look at me like that. I know it's embarrassing. But I didn't even learn to pump gas until I was in my twenties and the HM made me learn). She called her Grandpa to ask him to pick her up (Granny Tea is already in town). I called the people who live in the little one bathroom house up the road where we used to live and asked if it was at all possible for him to go change the flat tire on the van for us. Ordinarily we'd just wait and get to it when the HM gets home, but by the time he gets home we expect to have snow on the ground and plenty of it, and he doesn't want the white van left there on the side of the road where other cars might slide into it. While I was talking to them, my dad called on the other phone- his battery was dead and he couldn't get the new truck started.

I looked out the window- a few snowflakes are starting to fall and it's getting grey outside. I told my dad to hang on and I asked our friends down the road if they can possibly pick up the HG, deliver her to her grandparents' house, jump their truck, and then go fix the flat. They refuse, laughing, "Why would we do something like that? Are you crazy? Baby, it's cold outside!" I know he is already pulling on boots and coat and the little girls are clamouring to know why they can't go, too.

I put a couple hundred miles on the van yesterday and we arrived home about 8 p.m. and parked in the garage. I do not know where we picked up whatever it is that made the tire go flat, but I am glad it did not happen 90 miles from home. I am glad it's only a mile from the house at a spot where there is room for the van on the side of the room (it's the only place between here and about five miles from here other than our driveway where there is a place to pull over off the road). I am glad that the three people I know who have hit a deer in the last three weeks are all okay. I'm glad we have neighbors who don't mind (at least not too much) when we ask them for help with flat tires and battery jumps and things.

Really glad about the neighbors- the HG just called. They couldn't get the truck jumped. Mr. Neighbor suggests as tactfully as he can that perhaps something was left on, because this battery is deader than a Monty Python Norwegian Blue Parrot. Mr. Neighbor is now driving the HG to work, and then he will come back home and fix our flat tire, and then he will return to his previously scheduled holiday making with his family and friends.

I think these are signs that everybody should just come home and stay home.

Tip-toe Through the Santa Mine

I am going to tell you a little bit about our Santa traditions, how they evolved, and why we do or do not do the things we do. I am not telling this story in order to tell somebody else what they ought to do or not do. I am telling this story as ammunition in the annual Santa wars. I'm telling you this story because it's kind of funny- in retrospect, and if there is a moral. well, I will tell you what I think the moral is at the end. I told it last year, and as I said then, this is not a post that ought to make anybody feel guilty. This is not a post to persuade anybody else to do Christmas as we do. It's just a post with a funny story about why The Equuschick is responsible for the fact that we don't do Santa. Just read it and laugh (please laugh). Don't read it and feel guilty. WE don't care if Santa is a fixed presence in your homes in the month of December. We don't believe you are lying to your children or setting them up to disbelieve in God, or otherwise sinning against the child. We know that most kids believe in Santa and then learn better without any 'issues.' We don't have deepseated religious convictions about it (we don't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday at all, so it wouldn't bother us that Santa has become a secularized figure), but we're not going to get all het up over it if you do. Your family, your call. This is just a 'what happened to us' post, 'kay?

I was raised in a Christian home, and I believed in Santa, and- for my part, and this is just my opinion and the story isn't over yet, so don't leave if you're anti-Santa- I don't think it harmed me a bit. My parents made it their practice to tell us 'the truth about Santa' when we were around six years old. I don't even remember when and how I learned, but I do remember that when my youngest brother still believed and I was around ten years old, I thought it was very cool to be 'in' with this secret bit of Grown-Up Knowledge.

So we started out to do the same thing with our children. All went well with my first daughter. When she discovered the 'truth' about Santa, she thought it was fun to learn the secret. Didn't harm her a
bit. She also thought it was very, very glamorous and exciting to have this esoteric grown up secret.

By this time, I must tell you, I was very smug about the non-Santa camp. Those who suggested that this was deceiving children and they would wonder if you were telling them the truth about Jesus later, well, I won't tell you what I thought. It wasn't pretty. It was arrogant. Those who said it would crush children to learn the truth, well, obviously they were just silly. Hadn't I learned and been unbowed? And the HG, hadn't she positively reveled in the discovery of this mystery? Clearly, the other case had no merits.

Along came our second daughter, the redoubtable Equuschick. She was indignant. She was very upset to hear that there was no Santa, and she actually refused to believe me. Things did not go well. All my smug assumptions were exploded, one by one, by my small daughter. The people I thought were silly? Oh, I groaned within. They were right. (don't go away yet, more to come). She argued for at least a week, maybe two. It was horribly traumatic.

FOR ME!

The thing is, I *really* liked Christmas and all the trappings. I loved them. I reveled in them, and we romped through every Christmas tradition with great joy and frivolity every single year. I collected Christmas and wrapped it around us like a warm blanket. I had no internal conflict with the Victorian traditions of Christmas (trees, Santa, mistletoe, stockings, holly, ivy, elves, and so called secular carols) and religious issues, because I grew up in a church with a staunch stand in sola-scriptura, truly sola scriptura. So if there was no foundation for a religious practice in the Bible (mostly the NT), we did not have accept that there was biblical authority for that religious practice. Therefore, I had not grown up celebrating Christmas as Jesus' birthday and it was not part of our family traditions- until for a couple of years I added that to all the other Christmas trappings as well in our own tradition encrusted celebrations.

So we were going all out- my husband would sneak outside at night to ring bells, and I would say to the girls, "Hush! Listen? What could that be?" They would be all wide-eyed wonder and gasp, "It's Santa's sleigh bells," and I, carefully not lying, would say, "do you think so?"

I bought Santa his own wrapping paper and hid it carefully away so that all his presents were wrapped in paper the children had not seen, and our presents were wrapped in distinctly different wrappings and bows. We put out cookies and milk, with carrots for the reindeer, naturally. We wrote letters to Santa. We discussed how he could get down chimneys where there were no chimneys. We got the pictures taken in Santa's lap. After the children went to bed we would put out presents from Santa and fill their stockings and I was so excited on Christmas morning that I woke up my children more often than they woke me up (this is still true). We once had a friend come out to the house in his Santa Suit to give them a couple early presents. He was a friend of a friend, so the girls wouldn't recognize him. That was great fun. I don't even remember everything we did.

One thing I did not do was come right out and say that he was real. If asked, I never said yes. I always responded by asking, "well, what do you think?" I never came right and overtly lied about it. I just built up all
these corroborating details by my actions without ever in word saying that Santa Claus was real.

Keep in mind that these are the sorts of things my parents did, too, and yet I wasn't bothered when I learned it was one great big giant pretend, and I never heard that my brothers were, either . Our eldest never was
bothered by it, either.I am stressing that because I need to keep reminding myself that the exact same process happened with four other children I know of and they all were JUST FINE with learning about the make believe part.

But then the Equuschick was six, and it was time to let her in on this delightful, hilarious, very coolly grown up secret- that there was no Santa.

She was not delighted, hilarified, or even mildly amused. She was angry, indignant, and, in fact, she scoffed at such a notion. She refused to believe me.

She thought about it all day every day, and it seems like weeks later she was still coming up to me to argue about it. "But if Santa isn't real, how come his wrapping paper is different from all the other presents, huh? How about that? He IS real, isn't he?" And I would have to hang my head and mutter that, well, daddy and I bought that wrapping paper too, and just hid it in the back of the closet and only used it for Santa's presents. She'd look shocked, and, I thought, dismayed at her parent' perfidy. She'd walk off shaking her head. I have to confess I was secretly pleased with this one, because my husband thought the wrapping paper bit was unnecessary and the girls were too little to notice and not logical enough to draw conclusions. I drew what comfort I could from the fact that the Equuschick was clearly more logical than most small children. Devastatingly so.


Then a day or two later she'd back with, "If Santa isn't real, how come we set out cookies and milk and carrots for the reindeer and then they are gone in the morning? That proves it." And I'd have to confess that, well, Daddy and I ate the cookies, the carrots, and drank the milk. Then she'd be shocked. I still shudder over having to admit the truth to her when she demanded indignantly, "You ATE Rudolph's CARROT? YOU?" The best I could say in my defense was, "Well, Daddy helped!"

I felt wretched. And, of course, she never asked her father any of these accusatory questions even though he was just as involved in the conspiracy as I. No, she only grilled and humiliated me. Not even when she said, "But we HEARD Santa! There were footsteps on the roof and bells from the sleigh outside! Of COURSE he's real!" And I would have to sheepishly admit that Daddy sneaked out while they thought he was in the bathroom and did this whole bell ringing gig just to make this great pretend more fun. "YOU KNEW it was daddy all the time?!" Well, yes. And Daddy knew it, too, obviously, so why couldn't she go wound his ego with these questions, child, why? "It was just for fun, " I assured here. Oh, yes. Lots of fun. "Wasn't it lots of fun?" I pleaded.

It is a chilling thing to face the Equuschick's sardonic and accusatory eye, even when she was only six years old (and wearing about size 4T clothes). From an infant nobody has been able to snub with a look better than the Equuschick. I quaked in my shoes. I had nothing to say.

A day or two later she would be back, "But we wrote to him! We told him what we wanted for Christmas and we write init in a letter and mailed it to him. What about that?!" And so it went- she would come up with a new argument, I would explain it and be embarrassed as I stood before my tiny judge who contintued to be shocked at every new evidence of her parent's (not parents', just the one parent, me) treachery.

We never did Santa with the rest of the children. Probably they'd all have the personalities to be able to take it in the humorous and fun spirit which we intended, but we're not interested in taking a chance. I personally don't ever want to repeat the experience of having a child indignantly exclaim "You Ate Rudolph's carrot? How could you?." It was humiliating and made me feel ashamed.

I think it's interesting that she never once questioned the existence of God through all this. She didn't doubt that _He_ was real. She just doubted that her parents were sane and reliable people. No, she doubted that her mother was sane and reliable. I am not sure I have ever managed to regain my status in her eyes.

It's also interesting that she is now 22 and she does not remember any of this. She doesn't remember believing in Santa, she doesn't remember finding out he wasn't real, she doesn't remember spending a week or two holding me over the coals with her constant challenges She thinks it's all very funny now. Me, I'm scarred for life.
So that is why we don't do Santa. Nothing deep, nothing philosophical or theological, just the traumatizing experience of falling in the teeth of the six year old Equuschick's formidable logic skills.

We do tell the youngest lot that there was a man name Saint Nicholas who gave money to poor people, and that this is who Santa is based on. It's touchy, because then we get in situations such as the one where one of my children flatly announced to another child, "Well, Santa was a real man, but he's dead now."

We're really popular at our friends' houses this time of year. A real joy to be around, the Common Room Crowd. Come visit us and let us tear down your children's cherished dreams and pretends. How can you resist an invitation like that?
(I have *told* them and told them not to tell other people that Santa's dead, but it's hard for children to remember these things).

The moral to this story, if moral there is, has little to do with whether we do or do not do Santa, and everything to do with being smug, irritated, judgmental, or dismissive and other people and why they do the things they do. I was wrong- not for doing the whole Santa bit, and not for dropping the whole Santa bit, but for getting het up enough about what other people did that I allowed myself to sit in judgment of them over such a small issue- even if that judgment was primarily in my head. I am not one who is opposed to passing judgment- I think another word for that is discernment, sometimes. But sometimes it's just presumption, and there is enough of that on both sides of the Santa coin.

So we don't do Santa. nevertheless, on Christmas even we will hang our stockings on the cardboard chimney the youngest two children painted, and there will be new presents under the tree on Christmas morning. There will be rustlings and whispers and giggles in the night as we pass each other putting treats in each other's stockings. There will no lack of 'magic,' it will just be a magic of a different kind. And those who do Santa will not be accidental pagans, lying to their children and laying the foundations for a shattered faith.- unless, of course, they have a child like The Equuschick. And if that's the case, they have bigger problems (and more joy) than they can imagine.=)

Psalm 91

1He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

2I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.

3Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

4He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

5Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

6Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

7A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

8Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

9Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;

10There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

11For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

12They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

13Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

14Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

15He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.

16With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.

And thus ends the week.

So earlier this week, as was mentioned, I turned in a nearly twenty page research paper. I'm sure many who read here have done longer and better work, but that's the most I've done so far and I'm so pleased to have it finished. I took sanity breaks by playing short spurts of online scrabble with friends and by checking the votes at the Homeschool Blog Awards (tomorrow is the last day to vote!).

Today we visited an art museum for an exhibit of Roman sculpture along with several other homeschooling friends. I ended up shepherding an entourage of three boys in the 8-11 yo range through the exhibit. It was very different from my experiences than what happened when I was growing up and my family (predominantly female in number) visited art museums. Perhaps it can be best explained by a conversation Jenny and I had afterwards. She asked in exuberant tones if I'd seen the ladies' hairstyles. Then she proceeded to explain to me which hairstyle had been her favorite and wanted to know which was mine.
That was when I had to stop her. There was no way I had time to admire hairstyles with the crew I had. They were too busy imitating scenes of gladiators, dudes with swords, and trying to figure out if they could beat the other boys in our group to finding all the specific statuary they were looking for.
So, no. I missed the hairstyle details. I did get to watch a little boy get very excited over how Roman towns posted letters from the emperor. He was also really fascinated by the little metal military diplomas that the empire used. They were all impressed with the griffin frieze. It was pretty cool... not hairstyling stuff...but still cool.

I do like this song!

It's the most wonderful time of the year
Eddie Pola, George Wyle 1963

It's the most wonderful time of the year.
With the kids jingle belling,
and everyone telling you,
"Be of good cheer,"
It's the most wonderful time of the year.

There'll be parties for hosting,
marshmallows for toasting and
caroling out in the snow.
there'll be scary ghost stories and
tales of the glories of Christmases
long, long ago.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.
There'll be much mistletoeing
and hearts will be glowing,
when loved ones are near.
It's the most wonderful time of the year.

(painting by Norman Rockwell)

Frgual and Cute way to give money as a gift

This is supposed to be my Friday post at Frugal Hacks, but I absolutely cannot sign in there. I'm just giving y'all a small sample- there's a lot more in the full post, which I hope to get up another time (or maybe Kim will be able to drag her poor sick self away from the Porcelain Receptacle for That Of Which We do Not Speak (I am sad that we have had no more babies in the last 9 years, but I am not sad to miss the morning sickness). But I am off today for a super fun field trip.

This idea comes from a 1888 edition of Saint Nicholas magazine for children. As I said, this is just one example. There are several others to be shared later.=)



This is a knight templar 'paper doll.' YOu print him out, color him, and tape or paste a coin on for his sheild. You use the 'eagle' side of a coin. add some tinfoil to his armor, stick a feather in his cap (the original article suggests using a feather from your feather pillow) to give him a plume. The poem for this one says:

I am a proud Knight-Templar,
As you can plainly see,
And none but one more brave than I,
Can take my shield from me!"

I know several little boys who would be tickled with such an offering.

You could print out half a dozen or so if you like and give several quarters and a small squadron of noble knights to a little boy in your life. Or enlarge it and give silver dollars.

You could make his tunic three dimensional by using a coupon, either one of your own making or a gift certificate purchased from a favorite store.

This would work for a girl, too. I think it would be charming to use him in a card for a girl who may need some small financial assistance- rite in the card that this very parfit and genteel knight is eager to render aid to a damsel in distress.
In this way, says the original author, these paper dolls serve 'as an ingenious medium for conveying a gift of money, in a way which is sure not to offend.'


Crystal has the last Frugal Fridays of 2007 up, and you can get more frugal ideas there.

Cute Craft Ideas

This looks like a fun game requiring only some way to keep score, three flat rocks (but you could use dried lima beans or three poker chips) and marker to draw on the tokens.



Seamstresses (Jenny?) and those who love them will enjoy this free pattern for soft baby shoes, and they'll love this idea for remaking a too small skirt into a great purse.


Seed papers! Adorable idea! Lovely gift to send to somebody through the mail. You make paper with flower seeds in it, marigolds, for instance, which are easy to harvest. You cut them into cute shapes. In the spring, these can be planted in the ground and flowers grow. What a cute idea for a gift tag! This is a keeper.

This idea for photo magnets makes a quick and simple home-made gift, suitable for children and grandparents. I also like the link to the caramel popcorn recipe at the bottom of the post. A big store tin of caramel popcorn makes a nice and tasty gift (with better ingredients than the ready made stuff) for a fraction of the price when you buy the stuff ready made. But then, in our family, our seventh child once 'store bought' was the most insulting thing he could say to somebody. When he lost a chess game he once responded to our guest with disgust, "Well, you're just store-bought." Yes, he got in immense trouble, immense, because of his bad sportsmanship and rudeness to a guest. But all of us (including the guest) have been laughing up our sleeves at that remark for years.


These beaded hairpins are beautiful! In fact, I love pretty much everything I've seen here, and JennyAnyDots, you will, too!

Will power.

"Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself to possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing of daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting their burden on others. The making of the substance called character was a process about as slow and arduous as the building of the Pyramids..."

-Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

Christmas Break!

I turned in a nearly twenty page paper earlier this week. That is the longest I've ever done, and may I say that I'm so delighted to have it done? If you ever find yourself awake at two a.m. and wondering about the Anglo-Dutch wars, Admiral Tromp, the line formation, or the Treaty of Dover, go ahead and ask me. I ought to be able to spew out some sort of answer now.

Over break I want:
* to read The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering Our Past and maybe Blink.

* to hit snooze on my alarm clock several times in a row... which I already do during the schools semester...but now I will do it without guilt.

* to start transcribing a fabulous antebellum journal that a dear soul loaned to me. The hope is to use it next year as a source in a senior-level research course.

* to make a mess and cookies in the kitchen listening to Christmas music without trying to figure out in my head what school project needs to be done next.

* to edit spring semester's research paper for submission in a university sponsored competition.

* to finish reading the last fifty pages in Return of the King. I've had fifty pages left since August. :-P If it weren't a re-read, I'd have finished it by now.

* to snuggle with young family members (while hitting snooze on the alarm clock - that's a really attractive option)

:-)

A poem by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, called Cor. 13. I believe it was taken from 1 Corinthians 13.

A trust in you through life and death
And this is Faith
Your soul and mine, Eternity's scope
And this is hope
And faith and Hope and God Above
And this is Love.

News and Views

Another perspective on Kyoto

The Anchoress explains why she won't be voting for Huckabee , perhaps, Romney.
National Review is endorsing Romney.

Paul Geary is not impressed (neither am I).

Kevin Drum thinks Romney will get the GOP nomination.

Matt Yglesias says Huckabee isn't ready for prime time and hasn't done his homework.

Betsy's says Hillary isn't all that good at scrapping (and we don't mean the photo album kind).

The Anchoress also has an interesting book review of Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism.

Women in Iran cannot wear boots with their pant legs pushed down inside, and they can't wear hats untless they wear them over a veil.

Gates of Vienna has some information and perspective on a recent blog brouhaha. Not only is the topic of the disagreement interesting in its own right, but The good Baron offers some insight into how to handle corrections and blog disagreements. I also liked this post (I like lots of things, actually, and takes some self-discipline not to link to everything catches my attention, which is about as focused as the result when blow paint through a straw):

However much a people yearns to be free, the removal of a tyrant does not guarantee the emergence of a peaceful liberal democracy. Whenever the United States pulls out of Iraq, the best we can hope for is to leave behind a stable authoritarian government that is only moderately repressive and brutal towards its own people.

Scary stuff (may not be kid friendly): 'We will wipe out the people of Zion,' from the lips of an adorable little girl of around 11 or so may not seem as catchy as 'peace on earth, good will towards men,' but if you believe one belief is as good (or bad) as any other.....

Greasy Spoon Eateries

When I was in high school my brother and I wore braces, and our orthodontist lived, oh, I don't know for sure- in another town that I think was an hour away. There was a greasy little Mexican cafe there that served the most delicious chalupas and chimichangas I have ever had. Full of tasty meat (we always wondered what they did to it to make it taste so good, cheese, fried in crisp tortillas, smothered in sour cream and more cheese- we always stopped to eat there before we went on to the orthodontist (it hurt too much to go after the orthodontist's treatment).

In our own hometown there was a Mexican restaurant that was in what was once an old house. Walls had been knocked down to make larger rooms. It wasn't very fancy or pretty, but the food was outstanding. My mouth waters just thinking of it. The tostada grande was on a crisply fried, bubbled tortilla as large as a big dinner plate, and it was covered in refried beans, ground beef, onions, cheese, and sour cream. Nobody worried about all that cholesterol or about the deep frying, or if they did, nobody told me. Mmmm, mmm.

That was back in the 70's.

Here in my midwestern small town there's a dandy little diner that will give you good old fashioned biscuits and sausage gravy, mountainous biscuits, white, fluffy, tender, buried in half a gallon of old fashioned gravy made from sausage, grease, flour and milk. they serve other things, too, home fries, chicken fried steak and gravy, sandwiches (on white bread) slathered in mayo and piled high with meat. They don't even serve dinner- just breakfast and lunch. They've been around for ages.

"before America fell in love with cheap, convenient, standardized junk food, it loved cheap, convenient, independently deep-fried junk food....

In 1952, three years before Ray Kroc franchised his first McDonald’s, one out of four American adults was considered overweight; a New York Times editorial declared that obesity was “our nation’s primary health problem.” The idea that rootless corporate invaders derailed our healthy native diet may be chicken soup for the tubby trial lawyer’s soul, but in reality overeating fatty, salty, sugar-laden food is as American as apple pie.

More delicious reading here.

Reminds me of Fast Food Nation, the book, not the movie, which I reviewed here.

Which reminds me that a few weeks ago I saw the movie version of Fast Food Nation at the library. I thought I remembered a nice homeschooling mom with similar values to ours telling me that she'd watched it and it was interesting. So I added it to my other items and took it to the check out counter.

Talk about your Nanny State. There's no Nanny State like this small town library. The library clerk read the back cover of my movie case and looked at me sternly. "Do you realize this movie is rated R?!" she asked in very accusatory terms. Well, no, I hadn't. But, really, I think I ought to be able to choose my own movies without interference from the library staff. She looked at again and raised her eyebrows. "It's not rated R for violence or language," she pointed out firmly.

"But 'Lucy' told me it was good," I protested. "If she liked it I am sure I won't find it objectionable."
"I don't think so," said my clerk, "but you can call and ask, or her husband is working in back and we can ask him."

I asked, and I was mistaken. It wasn't Fast Food Nation, but Super Size Me that my friends had watched. I conceded my librarian's point and returned the movie to the shelf.

"I guess that would have been embarrassing," I said. "But I'm not sure the ALA would approve of you."

"I am sure they wouldn't. But they didn't raise me. Do you want me to pick up anything to bring home when I get off work?" my daughter asked.*

*Generally true, but lightly fictionalized account

Serenidipity Strikes Again

The NASA Mars rover Spirit has has a broken wheel, and this mishap is the cause of some fascinating new discoveries:

...the rover has been driving backwards, dragging the lame wheel along. This May, scientists noticed a bright spot in the trail of overturned dirt.

They turned Spirit around for a closer look, finding high levels of silica, the main ingredient of window glass. They then aimed the rover at a nearby rock, wanting to break it apart to determine if the silica was just a surface coating, or if the rock was silica all the way through.

The target rock survived Spirit’s charge, but a neighboring rock cracked open. The interior of that rock, which the scientists informally named "Innocent Bystander," turned out to be rich in silica.

The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley,
sometimes leading to serendipitous discovery!

More here

Where are the Grown-ups?

Fork over your applesauce for the meat and potatoes of adult thought, behavior, and responsibility, though they may be harder to digest. “Once upon a time,” she writes, “childhood was a phase, adolescence did not exist, and adulthood was the fulfillment of youth’s promise. No more. Why not?” She indicts the music industry, the laissez-faire or even actively deleterious parenting style of the Baby Boomers, and the fact that the young are now regarded as sophisticated when they are merely knowing. She blames multiculturalism and political correctness. She complains about misnomers like “adult bookstore” and “mature audience.”

From a book review at The New Criterion

A childlike wonder is a lovely thing to keep on your soul, but I don't understand the popular fascination with childishness.

"...unwilling republican, an enemy of democracy, and an architect, in fact, of economic aristocrac"

Founding father Alexander Hamilton

It's a long, though interesting, read.

Trees

"Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees. . . . Oh Trees, wake, wake, wake. Don't you remember it? Don't you remember me? Dryads and Hamadryads, come out, come out to me...."
Lucy felt that at any moment she would begin to understand what the trees were trying to say. But the moment did not come....
Yet Lucy had the feeling (as you sometimes have when you are trying to remember a name or a date and almost get it, but it vanishes before you really do) that she had just missed something: as if she had spoken to the trees a split second too soon or a split second too late, or used all the right words except one; or put in one word that was just wrong."

Prince Caspian, Chapter IX, pages 96,7

A Boy, Some Cardboard, and....

This is a freezer box put into service as a fireplace over which the Boy can hang his bear hunting rifle. The rifle is made from an old wrapping paper tube (they seem mostly not to come with tubes anymore, but we had a couple vintage rolls of wrapping paper from the Rattery), pipe cleaners, aape, string, and a cheap optical toy.

The freezer box on the other side is a play house with door and window. Turned on its side the door was a skylight and a curtain hung to cover the open end and double as a door (that way more kids could fit inside. It's had a number of incarnations and I expect it will have several more before it goes to the burn pile.

Christmas decorations.

This is the small village that is residing on our window ledge for the winter. The picture was a little bit blurry, but I wanted you to be able to see the prettyful lights.

One of my favorite Christmas books:

I love it! The story is soooo sweet!

Have you read it?

Why Pregnant Women Don't Fall Flat On Their Faces

According to science, anyway.

The Common Room, it is amused.

Dictionary!!!!

In this post on games we like (posted just a few hours ago) I mentioned Balderdash, but said that you could play the game without the board, that version is called Dictionary. We used to play Dictionary years ago, until somebody gave us the Balderdash board game.

I knew I'd just read the directions for playing Dictionary on somebody else's blog and I knew when I read them that I was going to want to link to them. But when the time came to share the link, I could not think where it had been. This was embarrassing (although none of you knew it) because when I was reading those directions, I also remembered thinking, "Oh, I'll remember I read these directions here. I don't need to make a note of it for later, because I'd never forget that I found a link I wanted at Life in a Shoe.

Oops. I can only plead middle age and caffeine deficiency.

Kim's very clear directions for playing Dictionary are here. THANKS, KIM!

The main advantage of the board game version is that the words are already chosen so it saves time. But it's also fun (and educational) to browse through the dictionary choosing your own words- not to mention far more frugal. Unless your game, like ours, is a gift.

If you like word games, I think you'll love this. It's just plain fun- and it also teaches some writing skills without even trying.

Homeschool Blog Awards (Yes, Again)

Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room

There are just three more days to vote for your favorite blogs at The Homeschool Blog Awards.
Vote for the Common Room... Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room
You only have until the 15th of this month to vote, so you'd better hurry up already.
Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room

We don't want our readers to feel any pressure to vote for us (even though we will sob into our pillows every night for weeks if you don't. But please, that's our problem, not yours. Don't let it worry you). We will never stoop to bribing or manipulating our friends (that incident with the ridiculously cute toddler picture two years was completely exploitive misunderstood).
Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room
We are up for best variety and best group or family blog, and we are also up against some admirable and worthy competition (Kim C at Life in a Shoe is a complete sweetheart). I am truly tickled pink that we are in the same category as these worthy folks (It's so nice to be in such good company)- and that's just the Best Family or Group blogs. The best variety blogs are also all fine companions.

It's tough to choose, we do understand. In fact- true confession- in a couple of categories where I wasn't really familiar with any of the blogs, after I looked at them and still found it hard to pick, I went and voted for the underdog just because I felt bad. Yes, I admit it. I am capable of casting a sympathy vote. So irrational, but I can't help myself. Under the circumstances, I really can't be too dogmatic about this whole voting issue, and we do not want you to feel any pressure about how to vote.
Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room
If you feel the pressure, we're going about it all wrong and need to adjust the frequencies on the subliminal messages we're sending.
Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room
Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room
Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room Vote for the Common Room

(or the blog of your choice)
Go vote and have some fun!

On line chess game?

I am looking for an online chess game. I am sure there are plenty out there, I want one that I and another person can sign on & off at our convenience and take our time with. I know we could email each other and both keep boards up, but I'd rather do it on line.

Article on Foxnews re: skewed global warming data

Article here.

do you know your carols?

This quiz is a fun one for testing your knowledge of Christmas carols. This was more enjoyable than the usual run of internet quizzes. For a student in the middle of finals week, it's fun to take a quiz like this.

I got an 84%. Hopefully that's not an indication on how I did with real tests this week. ;-)

Manners are Morals, II

The title for these posts comes from a chapter in one of my favorite 'housewifery' books, Sixpence in Her Shoe by Phyllis McGinley. She began thinking about morals when a good friend of hers was in tears over a disagreement she'd had with the mother of her grandchildren. Those grandchildren Mrs. McGinley describes as a

"pair of flaxen-haired, rosy-cheeked young fiends in human form."

Their grandmother had tried to convince the little girl

"to butter her bread like a lady instead of stuffing a whole slice into her mouth."

Her daughter-in-law insisted that this was fussy, rigid, silly- and she wasn't having it. She wanted her children to have 'self-reliance' and 'character,' not the unnecessary frills of manners.

Mrs. McGinley and her friend were certain that the young mother was missing something, but they did see the force of the argument that if manners were merely frills, they could be dispensed with. Mrs. McGinley found her answer while visiting a e boarding school with old and stately traditions. While walking through the buildings with her friend, the Headmistress (no, not this on, a real one;-D), they encountered a book laden student on the stairs, and the student dropped a curtsy, precariously balancing on the step. Mrs. McGinley is charmed by the quaint custom, but later asks her friend if this isn't just a little silly.

"We could omit the curtsy, if you like. It's only a school ceremony. But we can't drop this drill on manners. It's one way of teaching morality....
Manners and morals are all of a piece.... that child you smiled at just now wasn't doing just a difficult gymnastic stunt. She was showing respect to superior wisdom, sagacity, and"- here the Head glanced at me slyly- "age."

It may seem artificial, says the Headmistress, but it's training, and if it takes,

"these manners, the curtsies and respectful answers, and artificial niceties, may become something more than automatic reflexes. Her heart may be touched as well. She may learn really to respect authority and wisdom, value courtesy for its own sake, as well as go through the motions."

Mrs. McGinley asks, "You mean a gesture can instruct the mind?"

The Headmistress does think so.

"We believe in the philosophy that 'you become what you imitate.' Children learn the multiplication table by rote before they understand the theory of numbers. And we can also teach them certain physical responses before they are clever enough or good enough to understand genuine kindness. The young are hardhearted, you know. Selfishness has to be exercised out of them."

And out of some of us older folks as well. Mrs. McGinley concludes that her young friend who dispensed with manners as 'white-glove Syndrome' was reacting while the Headmistress was acting. Some courtesies may be out of date (white gloves, curtsies), but 'soft answers; inoffensive customs at table, courtesy to one's elders, betters, equals, and inferiors' are 'practical evidence of the kind hearts' and 'solid character' most of us want to see in our children. They are the first small steps.

Mrs. McGinley then moves on to ponder the Ten Commandments and how they can be stretched to fit many requirements of good manners.

"Quarrels.... you might stop a lot of them if everybody was reminded that we aren't supposed to covet or be angry or bear false witness.
Good breeding does not raise its voice in controversy. It refrains from temper tantrums. IT does not call its brother "fool." But it is the moral law which instigated the good breeding in the first place, not the other way round. The soft answer and the reasonable apology, the control of one's own ego"

these are based in theological virtues. Even those who no longer believe in theological virtues do, largely, believe in charity. And charity, realizes Mrs. McGinley, is more than donating to the cause of the hour or volunteering at the hospital.

"It is both larger and smaller than these things, at once easier and harder, and it does, indeed begin at home. Charity is graciousness and tact. Charity is a guarded tongue. It is picking up one's toys, giving a hand with the dinner dishes, writing a bread-and-butter letter to one's hostess. It is turning off television at a respectable hour so one's neighbor can sleep in peace, and being patient with bores. It is thanking salesladies in shops, forbearing to pass on the bit of malicious gossip so tempting to tell, wielding knife and fork so that we do not aesthetically offend.

'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,' wrote St. Paul. He might well have added that charity (before it progresses to such great bounties and is still a child) first learns not to monopolize the telephone, comes when it is called, asks leave to go to the movies or to use the car, remembers that adults have nerves and frustrations too, and is agreeable to guests in the house."

Charity offers the last cookie and the first piece of cake to somebody else. Charity lets guests choose the games and go first. Charity opens doors for others and says those magic words, "Please, thank-you, and you're welcome." Nice table manners are a start- you don't talk with your mouth full at table because others do not wish to see masticated cow rolling around in your mouth. But charity doesn't stop there. It doesn't much matter if you politely chew with your lips closed and only wait to speak until you have swallowed if what you say is a bitter diatribe against a fellow human being.

Fortunately, it need not be an either/or situation. We can teach (and learn) both the early, outward forms of charity through good manners, and the harder things that require self-discipline and thought.

Ice Storm

They are beautiful if you don't have to be out in them or have family out and about. This a tree in our backyard a few days ago.

"It sounds like Narnia out there," said the FYG breathlessly when she came in from sliding on the ice.

I am the fourth generation of my family to hold this land. I will be the last to hold a large part of it. We have a short amount of time to come up with a large amount of money due to a legal settlement, and after examining all our options we do not see any other choice but to sell off around 2/3 of the property.

I am closing comments on this post. I will probably shortly be posting something silly and trivial, because it is my preference to speak mirth and no matter. That's how I deal with things that cannot be fixed.

To those wondering if this is that dark shadow and burden I refer to in passing from time too time- no, not really. That burden came before the legal issues, and is not greater since them. The legal stuff and selling the property I only inherited four years ago are each just another, different ache, and I would cherish this second pain with rejoicing if only it would eliminate the first. It won't. It's related, but if we never had to sell the land the reason behind it would remain the same, and that is what I find weighing me down every single day and that first ache will not, so far as I can tell, ever grow lighter until time shall be no more. And that is all I can bear to say about any of it.

It is winter in our landscape, but for some time now and forever more it is always winter in my heart and never Christmas.

Why A Game Is Not a Frugal Purchase for Me

I hope y'all appreciate how embarrassing this is for me. Fortunately, this cuboard does have doors so I can just hide the mess and the embarrassing testimony of my inability to purge and simplify.

Somebody asked me to share some of our favorite games. Obviously, I am the last person to make suggestions, since I have no discretion. But here are some of our favorites:

Pen, which requires no equipment except a single pen, a single die, and a piece of paper for each player. The more players the better. You definitely need more than two. You sit around a table (or stand). Girls should pull back their hair. Players take turns rolling the die, all around the table, one player after the other, fairly quickly. As soon as any player rolls a 1 or a 6, that player grabs the pen and starts writing numbers backward, from 100 to 0 as fast as possible. You need to be fast because the other players are continuing to roll the die, and as soon as one of them rolls a 1 or a 6, that player will snatch the pen and try to write his own list of numbers from 100 down to 0.

We 'handicap' younger players. The very, very young only have to write from 1-10. As they get better at this, we add more numbers. Soon we switch to writing backward, maybe first from 10 to 1, then 20 to 1, then 50, and so on.

Boardless Scrabble-

We buy up old scrabble games at thrift shops and yard sales and we toss the boards. All the pieces go face down in the center of the table. Players grab seven pieces and form a small scrabble arrangement in front of them, trying to use all their tiles. As soon as one player has used all seven tiles, that player yells, "GO!" and everybody has to grab another tile. Often you will have two or three people yelling go at once, and then you have to grab a tile for each of them. You keep trying to build words and crossword puzzle-like arrangements of your tiles. You can rearrange them as you like. The game ends when the last tile from the center of the table is taken and the first player to use up all his tiles is the winner. You keep score by adding up the tile points the same way you do in regular scrabble (use a tile twice in two different words and you count it twice.
We don't usually keep score anymore. We just admire each other's best words (isopulogol from a chemistry major).

Killer; We don't get to play this much anymore because two of our oldest Progeny cannot wink. Isn't that odd?! We used to play it a lot when we had the single and unaccompanied military folks over every weekend for games- 20 years ago. You sit in a circle and deal out a card to each person. The one who gets the Ace of Spades is the killer (obviously you count out just enough cards for players, making sure the Ace is in the pile). He 'kills' people by winking at them. A few moments after they have been winked at, they die as dramaticially as they like. Other players try to guess who the killer is and reveal his name before they get winked at. To do this another player must state, "I have an accusation. Joe is the killer." If Joe is not the killer, the accuser dies.

Pinochle- Cardgame using only the tens through the Aces, four decks. I cannot explain more than this, but we really enjoy it.

Racko - good for non readers who know their numbers

Taboo - fun with a group.

Sorry- A very old stand by. I do not like the newer versions with the cards, but would rather play with a very, very old version. Just a personal quirk.

Dutch Blitz, a card game the Progeny play so much that for several years now we have purchased a new game every single Christmas because they've played the old cards into limp, fading shadows of their former selves.

Rage is another card game, one we only discovered this past year. It's been wildly popular. IN fact, we had to keep borrowin the deck from friends in town, and they finally bought us one of our own.

Apples to Apples- This is hugely popular. We didn't like all the original cards- some we thought inappropriate, some we just knew none of us knew anything about (football players, aging rock stars, soap operas), so we used white out and a marker and rewrote our own cards, adding the names of favorite literary characters, friends, book titles, and favorite foods. Non-readers can play, too. They just get five cards like everybody else and toss one in the mix when it's time. they win just as often as anybody else this way. We do not have the 'Bible' version and I do not think we want it. We play a zany version where you are just as likely as not to win for matching 'evil' with houseguests while you have houseguests playing the game, and beanie babies might be violent and scavenger hunts horrifying. I do not think I would feel comfortable playing our madcap style with a Bible version of the game.

Catch-phrase, easier than Taboo, but similar. Also fun with a crowd.

Chess, of course.

My son likes Stratego, but he must go so long between games that we forget the rules every time we play.

Outburst- I like both the regular and the Bible version of this one. This is also nice because you divide up into two teams and everybody on a team plays at once, so smaller children don't feel left out.

Scattergories- we team up non-writers with writers. Several of us like word games like this, boggle, blurt, and balderdash, but Jenny, the HM and The Boy would prefer Rummikub or Gin Rummy. In order to make boggle more competitive with younger children we permit them to use two or three letter words and deny three letter words to older players. Or we let younger children keep words that older players also found while the older players have to scratch their duplicates.

You don't need the balderdash game to play the same thing. We have played without the board and just used a dictionary. That version is called, "dictionary." Another blogger described how to play this just in the last few days but I can't recall who it was. If you know, post the link in the comments for me, would you?

For little kids, non-readers, you can't go wrong with CandyLand or Ravensburger games for the age group. I really like a four in one set called 'First Games' that I can't find at Amazon. We got ours at a thrift shop. All their games and puzzles are gorgeous, and I basically cannot resist them at the thrift shop. Go Fish and similar card games are also good for the younger set (War, Old Maid)

Guess Who is a one of my favorite games for non-readers. Only two players, but it's an excellent way to learn some early logic skills. That link is for the Spanish edition, which is half the price of the English, and it would be played the same way. We have also sometimes purchased the travel version of a game (Trouble is a favorite) because it takes up less space in the travel version and is usually much, much cheaper than the larger version.

Those are some of my favorites, but we do have plenty of others and we like them, too. We seem to go in spurts. For a while we played Pictionary every weekend. Then it was Monopoly, and then it was Bible Trivia or Encore (terrific group game for a wide range of ages).

As you can see, we like a lot of games (I didn't even mention Mancala or Mexican Train). We are flexible about how we play them so that younger children can play, too. We keep our eyes opened at yard sales and thrift shops (far too well, if the picture is any guide), and we like to collect games that don't require a board.

20 questions and I Spy are old favorites, easily adaptable according to players. Hunt the Thimble is another one the children used to love when the were children. Everybody leaves the room except the thimble hider, who must hide the thimble where it can be seen without moving anything (no hiding it under a cushion or inside a drawer). Other players come in and hunt for it. They maybe given clues (hot, cold...) and you can play so that the first to spot the thimble wins and it's time to play the next round, or you can play that as soon as you see the thimble, you sit down and wait for others to find it. Both versions work for us.

There are other ideas for other things that might work for you on this works for me Wednesday.

Updated to add: True Confession- this is the game cupboard after two purges in about four or five years. Just about a year ago I got rid of two huge boxes of games. Some were duplicates we'd been given, others were games the kids had outgrown. Others were just games none of us had ever enjoyed (Jenga). I kept a handful of favorite games that younger children visiting us might enjoy.

Another doll finished!

Hopefully I'll get pictures of the steps for these dolls up soon!

Really Cute Christmas Ornaments

Lizzie has done some homework and has found ways to take the glass ball ornaments to a whole new level. These are lovely! Check out all her links. I will just remind readers that the cheapest source for the clear glass balls is the used colored balls sold ten for a dollar at your local thrift shop- the more scratched, shipped, and peeling the paint, the better. You soak the balls in bleach overnight (remove the ornament hanger part first of course) and then rinse them out. Use a cotton swab dipped in bleach to wipe off any remaining paint inside the ball.

And these, well, this is just a breathtaking idea, especially for those of you who are really into geneology.

Some of you are so creative and so talented when it comes to decorating that I just sit here and sigh in wistful admiration.

And Oh, the cuteness!

Manners are Morals, I

I checked out an old movie from the library (not that old, from the eighties), a retelling of a fairy tale. It was Pussin Boots, with Christopher Walken. Walken was wonderful as thte cat who is played as a man, but the rest of the movie was somewhat wooden and very eighties. I took it back without encouraging anybdy else to watch it. something did catch my attention though.

In the movie the young Princess lacks poise and decorum and her late mother's oldest friend is constantly trying to get her to act more like a princess, to hold to more courtly manners. She's told that when sheh's presented with man at court no matter how ridiciulously he acts or dresses, she must not laugh at him. If she's served food she dislikes, she should not show it, but smile and eat. After a few instructions of this nature, there's a song:

A man for whom you have no zeal

Approaches you to dance the reel

His skin looks like an orange peel

His handshake makes your
blood congeal

Now, do you shriek or squawk or squeal?

Oh no, you
say, 'The reel? Ideal'


To be genteel

(To be genteel)

You must conceal

(I must conceal)

And not reveal

(And not reveal)

The way you feel

(The way I feel)

[...]
Before
the Ball, there'll be a meal

They'll pass the bread - you'll take the
heel

Though overcooked, you'll eat the veal

You'll also taste
the pickled eel

Then clap your hands like some trained seal

And
tell the king, 'The meal? Ideal'


[...]

When I'm
so mad that I could spit,

I must pretend the opposite

[...]I
mustn't cry

I mustn't laugh

A giggle is a dreadful gaffe


To be genteel sounds just a bit

Like being just a hypocrite


To be genteel, you must conceal

(Then I don't want to be
genteel)

And not reveal the way you feel

(It's much too much of
an ordeal)


You have to bow and scrape and kneel


You have
to keep an even keel ...

Now some of the lyrics of the song I agree were silly (I've cut them out for the most part), but most of this is not being a hypocrite, it's being self-controlled, considerate, and courteous. And as I watched the movied I got to wondering just how many decades we've spent confusing being sincere with being obnoxiously rude.

It reminded me of the old Bill Cosby routine where he said somebody told him once that doing drugs was wonderful because it 'enhanced your personalilty.' "Sure," says Cosby. "But what if you're an #*%&%(#(*&% ?"

If you are such a person, and frankly, most of are in some sense of other, given to the Old Adam, then you do not need your personality enhanced, you do not need to just relax and be yourself, you need to learn some self-control and consideration for others, in order to make yourself a better person.

Splash of Color

Geraniums in my sunroom, snow in my backyard. The sunroom isn't insulated, and so most of the plants in there are dead. But the geraniums just keep on thriving. It's wonderful. It's probably also why so many vintage illustrations of kitchens show pots of geraniums on the windowsills. They need so little care and give such a generous return for a spot in the sun and a bit of water now and then.

Frugal Links and More

I think these are all links I picked up this week from Crystal's Frugal Fridays Mr. Linky.

SaraLyn has gotten very creative with some 'what's in my hand' ideas for Christmas decorations. I am posting the link here not so that we can exactly duplicate what she did (not all of us will have the same tray, the rocking horse ready for repainting), but because what she did is so darling, and should inspire us to take another look at what we have on hand.

There are many great ideas for natural cleaning here. One caveat- if you live in a much older home with older materials, some of them won't work as well as they do on newer sinks and bathtubs. And vinegar does break down natural fibers faster than if you do not use it. So I no longer use vinegar with cottons and wools.

Naturally I'm attracted to Michelle's Improvisational Frugality, which is another way of thinking, "What do I have in my hand?"

I've mentioned this before, but I post so often on frugalities and using what you have on hand because I need these reminders. Last week I bought a game at the thrift shop on half price today. It's a board game called 'Sequence.' Last night we got it out to play it together in order to celebrate having the entire family under one roof for the first time all week (the HM was gone on a business trip all week, and he took two of the Progeny with him). We were tired so it might have been our fault, but we found the rules so confusing that we decided not to play and we picked a different game out of the game cupboard.

Yes, we have so many board games and card games that we have to have an entire cupboard just for the games. And they are spilling over. This isn't just any cupboard, either. It's a full sized monstrosity with 9 shelves inside and double doors on the outside. The game we picked was Clue, and I realized as we began to play that the FYG, who is 11, had never played it, and the older Progeny think it's probably been around 8-10 years since they played. I am looking at that game cupboard from where I sit, and I am appalled at the number of games in it that we have not paid in forever.

I don't remember how much I paid for Sequence, probably only fifty cents or a dollar. But it wasn't a frugal purchase.

Two exams down, two to go.

And a paper to finish, but I'm on page 15 so I'm not feeling overly worried -- just overly tired. :-)

Will really miss my Latin American history class and my history of Europe class (despite its frustrating moments). I know that phrase probably doesn't get used much in college vocab - missing a class - but there are classes where that's true.

Favorite moment of the day (apart from coming home for half an hour and collapsing on the couch with the FYG while she read Prince Caspian and dad while he read the football book): standing outside the history of Europe classroom hashing out essay questions with my classmates *after* the exam had been taken.
"I only put down the first Theresian reforms, what about you?"
"Well, I didn't distinguish between them, actually. I did talk about Joseph II and his reforms."
"I wish I'd remembered to use the word 'cupidity!'" (rather an in-joke for our class)
"I really had fun with that first essay question."

*happy sigh* honors history students are a minority, but such a fun one. :-)

Quiet Strength, a Memoir

I picked up Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy when the Equuschick was in the hospital nursing her pancreas. I have always enjoyed reading biographies about leaders. Leadership is needed in our nation, in our churches, and especially in my gender. We need servant leadership that is gentle, strong, and effective. We need leaders who care enough about others to step up and say, "Follow me, I'll smooth the path for you and accept responsibility for our direction."

I first heard of Tony Dungy from a young lady that worked for me in a small town in this state. She and her family loved the Colts. She told me that I would enjoy learning about him because of what he stood for. She was right about that, anyway. Later on I was forced to terminate her employment with the company due to her being dishonest. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book.

Here are a couple of excerpts from his book:

"If you want to lift yourself up, lift someone else."
~Booker T. Washington

"Absolutely Not." I have been approached many times over the last