Fresh starts

Lamentations 3:22-23

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

It's been coming for awhile. We've been too grouchy and too harsh, and we've had too many brushed-over unkind moments. So, we cleared the calendar today and took the time to talk. I made cups of cocoa, and a more sustaining latte for myself, and we settled in front of the fire. We talked about fresh starts, and the joy that our faith brings us in being forgiven and offering the same.

"Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing."

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

I'm not sure all folks are like us, but we prefer to do things right the first time. When we have to dust ourselves and start again...well, it just doesn't sit too well in our britches. Nonetheless, we need to, and so we dust and start and dust and start and pray and dust and start yet again.

The valentine candy came in handy, too, with the goofy messages on each. We talked about how to express love to each other, and we even had some healthy back and forth about whether we were being reasonable in our requests. It's not easy to be honest with a bunch of outspoken and opinionated folks in your family, and I was proud that each took the time to tell us what they thought.

“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning...”

Joseph Priestley

When my mother-in-law was here, she mentioned how much she appreciates the individuality of our children, that they are not a bunch of cookie-cutter people. I love that, too, for there's never a dull moment around here. Everyone's interests are branching out to new heights and depths, blossoming in exciting ways. Today, though, it was time to weave the tender branches back together for a bit, to clean out the unspoken hurts, and to remember how much we love each other.

It was time very, very well spent.

"Marilla, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Lost and found

S.A.R.Ex. = Search and Rescue Exercise.

I've sent two young men off with backpacks full of long underwear and pretzels, snowshoes and tarps to the cold and blowy mountains for an overnight adventure. They plan to make snow caves, sleep in said snow caves, and then proceed to get "lost" so that new Search and Rescue teams can learn to find them.

The sky this afternoon looks like a watercolor artist's practice page for "Shades of Gray." The wind is blowing the bare branches of the oaks and causing the wind chimes to sing their songs loudly. I know these adventures are my boys' idea of heaven-on-earth, so I will be excited for them.

All the same, I will be happy to see them pull in the driveway tomorrow afternoon. We'll have the hot cocoa ready.

Love/ Hate Meme

I love to eat: food prepared by someone else
I hate to eat: too much
I love to go: to the beach
I hate to go: too many places too many days in a row
I love it when: the UPS man drives up the driveway
I hate it when: I forget something important
I love to see: the sun set over the water
I hate to see: a house on fire
I love to hear: birds singing
I hate to hear: nagging

from my friend Miz Booshay

Crafting

I am eager to make use of some of my craft stash, and the easiest place to start is in the button bag. Many of these buttons were my mother's; sorting through all the shapes and colors brings back memories of fiddling with the same buttons as my mom was sewing.

We made button barrettes,

and we made button gift bags.

Don't worry... we didn't use any button stash for this, but isn't it a beautiful latte?

Inspiration

Dost thou love life?
Then do not squander time,
for that is the stuff
life is made of.

~Benjamin Franklin

HT: 4:53 a.m.

Game day

Twelve points
Eight rebounds
Six steals
One block
and
A win

As the game progressed, the opposing coach kept calling to his players,

"Guard #1"
"Watch out for #1"
"Get #1."

OH YEAH!

That's my boy.

Remembering Idaho Beauty

Great advice

"My advice: Don't wait for inspiration. Just get to work." Mrs. M-mv

There are many good reasons to read Mental multivitamin, but this attitude toward life is something I never tire of.

And it certainly applies to more (much, much more) than writing for a living. A room to clean? A relationship to mend? A school day to run? Unpleasant jobs, easy to procrastinate tasks, attitudes, life goals...for all these things I like to remember: Just get to work.

Yes, I believe in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but sometimes we need to step out and be faithful to our callings; we can be confident that the knowledge of His inspiration will come with hindsight.

Hmmmm.....

Your Personality is Very Rare (INFP)

Your personality type is dreamy, romantic, elegant, and expressive. Only about 5% of all people have your personality, including 6% of all women and 4% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

Dreamy, romantic, elegant, and expressive? I'll take it!

HT: Mental multivitamin

Decisions, decisions

It's that time of year when current Schola families need to decide what courses their students will be taking next year. And what a great list from which to decide! I took my trusty laptop, along with the required dark roast beverage, out to my beloved red bench, and thought long and hard about the choices we were facing.

There's the assumed Great Books classes: Great Books 2 for the middle child, and Great Books 3 for the older son. Oldest will be mourning the loss of Great Books next year, as she is in the midst of her beloved fourth year, but the options for her gap year are beyond exciting. She'll be taking Greek 2, hoping to get a head start on studies at her desired future college, and she will share a computer with her just-younger brother so they can study Rhetoric together. She longs for more, though. With next year's list including Church History, Doctrine/Apologetics (each a semester course), and Bible History/Astronomy (also each a semester course), it was difficult to narrow it down. Once she figured out what she could pay for, and once we determined that we would give her an extra class for her eighteenth birthday, and once we figured that sharing a computer for Rhetoric would be an option, we came up with a plan. She's also going to take Church History (she already has the set of books that are required) and the Doctrine/Apologetics course. She is competing in the apologetics category in speech, so her interest has been stimulated. Both her parents hope to eavesdrop each week and learn what we can from history and doctrine.

We'll add Latin from Mrs. Wells (formerly Miss Callihan) and be done with our online commitments for the year.

It's not an inexpensive outsourcing option, but Schola is worth every.single.penny. If you're interested in getting in the Schola loop, look around the website (click on the top link on the sidebar -- Online Tutorials), and then email the esteemed tutor with a request to be added to the waiting list. It can be a tough loop to get into, but go ahead and try. You won't regret it.

I found a Schola mug to be most diverting while making our decisions:

My husband refers to this as "the coolest mug ever." You can purchase yours right here.

A Dickens of a time...

It all began with a speech two of the students in our speech club are doing from

The Five Minute Iliad and Other Instant Classics.

It's a hilarious spoof on Dickens, and we have chuckled and guffawed our way through it several times.

Next, Great Books 4 class was assigned

David Copperfield

Esteemed tutor Wes Callihan told his captive audience about reading the book in high school or college on a rainy day with a cold; our daughter could not have been happier when her winter cold settled in on a rainy day with a calendar open for Copperfield binging. I'm sure she'll never forget that reading of Dickens.

Then, we drove off to Idaho in the cold and rain and snow. It's a long drive in ideal conditions, but with ice and snow and pouring rain, it slows it down even more. We were accompanied on our travels by the excellent reading of Nadia May bringing

Oliver Twist

to life for us. May's reading is FANTASTIC, and we enjoyed all sixteen hours of the novel, finishing it just minutes before we finally pulled in the front gate.

Next in line was our movie viewing of Bleak House, and now our oldest is busy finishing up the reading of the same.

When we were done with the movie, we felt our appetite for Dickens was far from satisfied, and we decided that we would read

Our Mutual Friend aloud.

The BBC movie version is one of our family favorites, but we are finding the book to be even better.

To cap off the Dickens fest we have unintentionally been celebrating, I found these at my favorite thrift haunt:

Four plates for a song...

picturing The Old Curiosity Shop.

The perfect accompaniment for Dickens here, there and everywhere.

Do you have a favorite Dickens we should pursue next? Click the contact button on the sidebar to email and let me know.

Our Mutual Friend will be a long-term commitment, but I like to plan ahead.

For those of us who take our coffee seriously

read: Drip Grind

Taylor Clark's weak case against Starbucks
By Doron Taussig

Game day

There is a certain almost-nine-year-old boy in our family who has been waiting a long time to get on the court and off of the sidelines. He's sat through two seasons of his brothers' basketball games, he has attended a Boy Scout Court of Honor every six months for the same brothers. He has come along to speech and debate tournaments, and waited outside of countless piano lessons.

Our #1

That's all changed now, though.

Winning the tip

Every Saturday this winter we will be in the stands cheering on #1.

The crowd goes wild

And the big brothers will be on the sidelines this time. The hours they have spent on the backyard court have prepared their not-so-little brother for this moment. And did he shine? Oh, he was shining like the sun. Eleven points. Three steals. Great defense. Constant hussle. They won by twenty.

And we were there to see it all. Life is good.

The rungs of a ladder

I was inspired this morning by reading Holy Experience. Each day is a ladder, made with rungs of intentional living. I will be thinking on this for days. Thank you, my friend.

For inspiration of a different sort, here is a ladder of a different sort. We'd love to do this.

HT: Semicolon. As an unapologetic lover of books, she posts several ideas for shelving that will thrill the kindred book spirit.

Sick day assistance

Bleak House

It is l.o.n.g.

It has really cool camera angles.

It helps you forget the aches and the cough....almost.

The Great Debaters

The Great Debaters

* Please check with online sources for reasons for PG-13 rating; you want to be aware of the questionable content and choose accordingly.

Recommended

George Winston Piano Solos

Included in this sheet music is Winston's Joy, the very song played as I walked down the aisle on our wedding day. Many of these songs, and especially that one, bring tears to my eyes as my daughter plays.

Warm and well-lit at last

The rain is falling hard upon our hilltop abode, and the darkness of the day has caused me to be surprised at the early hour. Surely it is dusk! But, no; it is only 3:30. I have the porch light on in anticipation of my husband's return from work, even though it is only mid-afternoon. He is sick, but he had to teach 176 eighth graders today anyway. I turned on the porch light to remind him of the cheery news that the power is ON. He was the faithful soldier who was without power in our home for seventy-five hours, Friday through Monday. He cooked on the propane stove outside in the cold. He brought my mother over to our house so she could sleep in front of the warm fire. He burned his way through what we thought was a half-year supply of IKEA candles. An award of bravery to that man, please!

And where was I as the oatmeal was being stirred in camping style on the porch? I was away for fifty-eight of those hours, coaching and judging and visiting my way through our first qualifying tournament of the year for speech and debate. I was driving 1,100 miles in our faithful car, Vincent Van Go. I was trying to sort out solvency, topicality, inherency and significance as I sat through debate round after debate round after debate round. I was downing weak coffee from the judge's room before going on to the next round of speeches. I heard speeches on God's grace, Pilgrim's Progress, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Wind in the Willows, the primary elections, conspiracy theories, rats, fashion, and bees. And more. And more. The swirl of inspiration, talent, hard work and creativity was awe-inspiring. What great kids. What a terrific week-end.

As colds and viruses finish their dirty work in our throats and lungs and muscles, we are all curling up in different corners, enjoying the freedom that electricity brings. We have warm blankets, a warm fire, candles for ambiance purposes only, and good books and warm lattes. We can turn on lights, have a hot bath, watch a movie or recharge our cell phones. We can see as we do our final rounds of the night and do the piles of laundry that have accumulated over the last week. We can enjoy being together again, and we can acknowledge that we prefer to suffer together rather than apart.

And we can savor the successes of the children, for there are many. Our youngest scored TWO baskets in his first-ever basketball game. Both of our older boys were very successful in debate, and they ended up having to debate each other in an elimination round. The younger knocked out the older...and felt the pain along with the joy. Our middle son got to semi-finals in impromptu and original oratory, while our oldest daughter got to semi-finals in both of her prepared speeches. There were two speeches in the family that did not break to semi-finals, and there are good lessons to learn in that disappointment. But as mother and father, we are so proud and pleased with the diligence and determination of all of our children. My heart overflows with waves of gratitude for this rich life.

It is a great night for a rain storm and the warm and well-lit indoors.

Yes!

HT: Mental multivitamin

The perfect spot

Moscow, Idaho was beautiful....and cold.



But, it offered the best of places to warm up and relax together.
*Bucer's (boot-zers) Coffeehouse and Pub*

Eggnog latte, David Copperfield and P.G. Wodehouse, and my oldest. Heaven.

An hour later, everyone joined us. Brother and sister read quietly while the wiggly ones went for a walk in the snow.

Bucer's, your floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, your leather chairs, your friendly staff, your beer and cigar selection, your great music, your warmth ... all these make you the best-coffeehouse-ever. We wish you were here. Truly.