...motherhood is fierce and wonderful... (and my lengthy current booklist!)

Fall colors, fair fun, moody skies.  School days fly by with lots of books and drawing and music and math.  Millie is learning about ancient British history, which is a pre-cursor to the (closer-to-home) American history Lyddie is now learning.  I am reading through a lot of the girls' books ahead of time so that I am a little ahead of the curve.  Homeschooling is really a part-time job, did you know that?  It takes me several hours every day to prep, teach, clean up, and prep for the next day.  It means I have to pick and choose what I'm able to accomplish or participate in very carefully to leave time for keeping up with running the home, spending time with Rosie, managing my friendships that I cherish, and maintaining one or two things that are mainly for me, like knitting or cross-stitching or reading or, yes, exercising (my least favorite but probably most essential renewed "hobby").  If something doesn't make the cut it doesn't mean it's not wonderful or important but just that I am so completely aware of my finite abilities that I know I won't do anything well if I add it in.  What a balancing act. 

We are participating/helping with Kingdom Kids two afternoons a week.  All of us girls really enjoy going and being with the kids and having fun.  I find it really life-giving. I try to keep an open hand with whatever the Lord has put in front of me, knowing that my main priorities of mothering this stage may call me elsewhere, but I feel thankful that my little three are doing well and enabling me to participate in something outside of our home that brings me such joy and delight in the long run. 

I haven't done any canning or preserving of any kind this year, which is really unusual but unsurprising, so to make up for it, I bought two boxes of peaches that I'm quickly trying to can so we have several jars to grab this winter to go alongside soup dinners. Fourteen jars in and I still have another whole box to put up.  I also have a cantaloupe I want to make into jam from Food in Jars- a recipe I've been wanting to try for a few years because we really love melon.  I plan to do some applesauce too, if I can, and that's about it.  

We had a surprise batch of chicks hatch from a broody free-ranging hen and they are just the absolute cutest thing.  Although we weren't desirous of any more chickens, (we already have about 17), I never get tired of watching them trail after their mama, who is as protective as can be and fiercely fluffs her feathers up and will fly at anyone ostensibly posing a threat to her brood.  Motherhood is fierce and wonderful. 

As long as I'm just writing a rambly post, I'll note my booklist:  

• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is a really well written novel in the fantasy genre but is what I'd call "gateway" fantasy.  The story is very good and it doesn't really fit all the "tropes" that some of the fantasy series rely so heavily on.  Jesse also picked it up to reread it after I started, in order to beat me to the second book, which, since I did give it to him last year as a gift, I guess I should defer to him.
•  I'm also reading Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix, 
• Slowly making my way through Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, 
• Reading Volume II: Parents and Children of Charlotte Mason's Home Education series (excellent and full of Aha! moments!)
•  finally nearing the end of listening to The Count of Monte Cristo along with the CraftLit podcast
• and delighting in listening to The Green Jacket  along with the Forgotten Classics podcast

For the girls' school pre-reading, I just read 

• Pinocchio for the first time ever and
• Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle, which is a book I remember really loving when I read it as a child for school and I think Lyddie is going to love it when I hand it to her as a free read,  
• Now I'm working on the Crimson Fairy Book of fairy stories compiled by Andrew Lang. 

 I don't know how I'm squeezing in so much reading; I'm not really, I just fly through the school books in a couple days each, and my own reading is much slower than that.  How lovely it is that there are so many delicious books.

small joys

 

 

 (photo credit of the two pictures immediately above goes to Lyddie)

So many pictures but forgive me, I haven't got time just now to separate them into two separate posts.  The week has been full of joys to hold onto:

The light filters through the clouds, making the snow glow

Gifts are tucked under the tree and I watch the pile of bright wrapping and curly ribbons grow

We laugh at the littlest sister pretending to be Santa (find me on Instagram: sarahdempsen - to see the most adorable mini-Santa wishing you Merry Christmas)

We find time for extra cuddling and reading Christmas stories (my new favorite:  Christmas in Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren)

We experiment with recipes for spritz cookies while playing with the cookie press I inherited from my momma

Though daddy is gone evenings this week, I use the time to introduce my daughters to The Santa Clause, a silly favorite movie from my childhood

We anxiously anticipate the mailman's daily delivery of packages

Needles click and fabric grows

We celebrate Christ's birth with growing numbers of tutored children and youth during a special Christmas party: a visit from Santa, games (Do you wanna build a snowman??), cookie decorating, and gifts from sponsors and smiles!  So many smiles!

We daily hang ornaments on our Jesse tree and I lean against the couch struck with wonder that so many days have already passed since we hung the first one

We find more eggs nestled in the boxes each day again, brown, blue, and pale pink

We wake to magical snow... and go to bed with more snow

We rise slow in the mornings, and daughters crawl in under my covers while I lie waking cozy with a little arm stretched around my neck, fingers caressing my cheek, and another little one wrapped close, her tummy pressed into my back. The light grows and grows as we first lay in stillness and then begin to stir about, telling about dreams that visited in the night or about other thoughts flitting through the minds of my little sugar plum fairies. 

It is a peaceful week in our home, an intentional choice on my part, made even simpler by the snow and ice on the roads these past few days.  I am glad for it,and I am looking so forward to next week when we will travel to be with my beloved brothers and parents and other dear family.

Yarn Along, November!

Not much new here, just several added inches on my Radiance shawl as well as several inches on my first Vanilla Latte sock.  I am really undecided about the length I like my socks, so I decided to make them just slightly longer than ankle socks.  I still really like the sunny yellow of the Dandelion colorway and think it is a fun shade to get to knit with.

I'm still listening to The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - down to the last few chapters, and reading North! or Be Eaten by Andrew Peterson.  But mostly I am working hard on accumulating SLP continuing ed credits each night online so I can keep up my membership in the national organization.  I am learning and re-learning all kinds of interesting things about literacy development, fetal alcohol syndrome, and other speechy kinds of topics.  It touches the part of me that really misses working with a team daily with families and children with special needs and I find myself even remembering things about grad school that have been pushed to the recesses of my mind in this process.  I love being a mom and my precious children have plenty of their own immediate and unique needs and I always planned to be at home with them once they came.  It just makes me nostalgic for the good and exciting aspects of that career and especially the incredible workplace I left.  The call on my life here is just as exciting to me, and part of the reason I am continuing to push myself to stay current is so that, if or when the Lord opens doors for me to use the knowledge I believe He has planted in me, I will be ready, even if that is several years from now.  I really enjoy working with some of the children in our after-school program once or twice a week, and am doing some remedial reading instruction for a few children who should be reading but really aren't at all and I get this little taste of that joy of helping children meet goals and be enthralled by the feeling of success they experience, sometimes for the first time in the area of reading skills, and oh!  I so enjoyed reading Where the Wild Things Are to two boys yesterday who hung on every word and every picture.  It made my heart sing to see the joy lit in their eyes as they connected with Max, the king of all wild things and considered the magic of facing fears with an unflinching stare.

Things of Beauty

I am joining up again with the Yarn Along that Ginny hosts each week - books and yarn are two things that give me such satisfaction and I kind of store up my chat about those here in my space until Tuesday night for this post.  I am still plugging away on the Sugared Violets that I was hoping I'd have done this week but with sick kiddos, I use my valuable evening knitting time to catch up a little on the housework.  I have made significant progress but I can only get through about one row per night with over 300 stitches per row at this point!  I am musing about my next project after it's done... I really should make a diaper cover or two since we're a little short on those for RosiePie (Millie calls everyone Pie.. like MamaPie, DaddyPie, RosiePie), but I also have this yummy blue yarn I picked up with a special Christmas gift card from my brother Sam.  I don't have any pictures of that yarn yet but I am sure you will see it soon!

As far as books... I have several books that I am reading right now.  Sometimes I get book ADD and then there are books scattered everywhere because I can't make up my  mind which to dive deeply into.  I am barely into The Book of the Dun Cow but oh my, it is good and intense and it makes me look at my rooster differently.  Jesse has read it and agrees that it is an intense book.  I am also reading a little through Rez Life which I picked up on a whim at the library.  I had no idea if it was going to be worth my time but the author is a really interesting and engaging writer and I am learning a lot about the Ojibwe tribe here in the first couple chapters.  And I finally finished listening to Dracula and I'm allllllmost caught up to the current podcast of CraftLit for The Age of Innocence.  It is fun to pop it on in the afternoon when everyone is resting and I'm cleaning the kitchen or starting dinner.  Starting February 7, we will be starting North and South by Elizabeth Gaskill, so if you have a hankering to start in with a new book you really should check it out.  If you don't like the crafty chat, she also has Just the Books with only the book and book chat. 

This isn't my project, but this cowl and these mitts were gifted to me by my sweet mom for Christmas and I've been waiting to show them off!  I love them so much.  They are the only reason for being disappointed with the unseasonably warm January we are having since there's not a lot of reason to wear cozy mitts when it's getting up into the 50's.  But I'm sure in a few weeks we'll be back to shivering again and I will wear them all the time even around the ol' homestead.   

  

My second kid went down with a fever today and I was feeling a bit down so I made extra effort to focus on the things of beauty around me.  That does really help me keep my eyes up and lifted to the Giver of all good gifts.  
Once Lyddie's ibuprofen kicked in, she felt pretty dandy for a while and entertained us both with silly faces for the camera.  She has an incredible giggle that bubbles up out of her and lights up her whole face, especially her eyes.  You can practically hear the giggles when looking at the pictures above.  She giggled at every one of the silly pictures I took and begged to take more.  Jesse looked from her to me last night and said, "Is she just like you when you were little?"  And I laughed because I'm sure she probably is, my sweet, kind, lovely little flibbertigibbet.  Speaking of that munchkin, the picture of Rosie and I was actually taken by her, all by herself, and I think it turned out really nice.

Our family has joined in with Ann Voskamp's Scripture memory challenge, which was something I was already trying to decide how to incorporate into our morning family worship, and lo and behold, she had a system for me that made it easy!  So far all four of us have joyfully memorized John 1:1 and have mostly memorized John 1:14.  I printed off the artwork and keep them at the table and we practice in the morning and the girls want to do it again at lunch and again at dinner.  This is a lovely habit to form, I think, a new verse each week.  I am amazed at how fast these little ones can memorize the words and I love the doors that open to understanding and explanation as the words become embedded in their minds and hearts.  The same is true for me, and I am reflecting on Jesus as the Word as I go through my days.

Beautiful

These kids.  Beauty.

When we began exploring the possibility of moving here to the Reservation to join Sacred Road about six years ago, we really had no idea what the Lord had for us.  We figured it would have something to do with teaching, working with children and as we explored more, the ideas grew and blossomed.  The Kingdom Kids program is still in its baby stages, I think, compared to where it will be a few years down the road and we will look back and think of all the things we wish we knew now but for now, things are moving. 

Today was the first day following the Christmas break, and Mondays are the day that I am able to help while my girls play quietly on the floor nearby.  The van pulls into our driveway, loaded with kids - 11 today - and I dash out to greet them, following them into our Clubhouse next door.  

How do I describe my joy in seeing each one of them again?  There's Nate, oh good, he was at school again in spite of the break.  And Gerald, the newest Kingdom Kid, grinning happy to be here and telling a joke while he tromps into the Clubhouse.  And at the back of the line the fifth grade girls smiling and quietly chattering, those girls for whom my mother-heart aches.  

I sit at a table, Yahtzee set out and ready, and those same girls gather around me, gossiping about school and haircuts and which dice to keep on their turn and which to re-roll. One girl struggles to understand the rules, struggling with the basic multiplication when she rolls 2 sixes, so I slow everyone down for a second to make sure she gets it.  The other girls help, and I note the lack of impatience or judgment that would be typical in another setting but here, today, is absent.  They are like sisters; no, they are sisters, helping each other comfortably figure out how to make the dice work best.

I work today with Jaime, baby strapped to my back happy in the carrier. Jaime, who told me a couple weeks ago that he has decided to be an artist when he's grown, and he could be too, with the meticulous detail he puts into each artistic creation (and I rejoiced to hear a child talk of their dream for some day here).  Jaime works hard in spite of how hard (and admittedly boring) the homework pages are.  I wish I could assess his skill level with reading and language comprehension more closely today but the homework page isn't optimal for getting a good sense of his abilities with reading beyond the fact that it is too hard for him to complete independently.  I wish I had some of the resources at my fingertips that I had when I worked in a clinical setting - just the resources because it takes hours of research to find or design the right kind of materials I have in mind for assessing or teaching concepts.  

We head early to the Cougar Den for an ice cream surprise!  The ice cream machine is broken, so it's ice cream sandwiches and cones from the ice chest, and each boy and girl make their choice and eat the sweets (milk and sugar are correlated with love, the experts say...) and the kids on the bench make bracelets for my little ones, whose eyes light up at the attention and the gift, and the sister-friends who make faces at my baby to make her smile and kiss my toddler's soft cheek.  All these beautiful children, these ones who reflect their Creator in their eyes and features and smiles and skills. They load into the van to return to their homes and I load my little ones to return to our home and I whisper a prayer

That they would walk in His ways all their days

That they would know they are beautiful and seen beautiful by the One who defines Beauty by His very self

That they are worth more to Him than His life

 and that He would hold them in the palm of His hand in all the storms to come.