...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.

a million tiny ways

Oh the happy joy of hearing that we can probably sign papers on our new house this week or early next week!  Buying this house has been fantastically simpler than selling our other house, and buying our other house, for that matter.  I am so glad.  The amount of hoops to jump through as a first time home buyer made things so stressful, but this time we just keep toddling along with no drama.  We plan to begin moving in next Friday. I can hardly believe it. 

We began to read Tales from Moominvalley yesterday and Lyddie loves it.  I also love it and being generally in love with Scandinavia, this quirky story has Scandinavia all over it and is right up my alley.  I am amazed at the cursive handwriting of both Lyddie and Millie.  Their copywork is looking lovely and the quick hard work of introducing cursive in early fall is paying off.  I'm really glad I went that direction.  Rosie likes to sit when we do school with her spiral notebook and make loopy "letters" and gets mad at me when I move on to the next math problem or spelling word before she's "ready."  It makes me smile and makes me realize how quickly the time will fly by until she's reading and writing, and then I want to cry that my baby is getting so big.  Today we laid the foundation for multiplication with work on doubling and halving and I loved the light going on in Lyddie's eyes when she really realized what we were doing.  On Sunday our sermon at church was about a passage in 2 Peter that speaks about false teachers.  Lyddie was listening closely, and when we had a mini lesson about our hymn (The Church's One Foundation) over breakfast this morning and discussed the line, "by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed" these were setting up a really interesting knowledge base for reading later in the morning about Athanasius in Trial and Triumph, a book of stories of the early church.  Athanasius spent most of his life teaching the truth of Christ's deity against the then-prevalent Arian view that Christ was not truly God in the way the Father is.  The story of his life is very interesting, but it was made even more interesting by all the events colliding and the ideas of falsity and truth and standing for the truth were spreading long fingers out into our brains.  Basically, school is the best.  But don't ask how our session of watercoloring went.  {It ended with children whining and me yelling and putting myself in a short time-out.  Then we danced around and did the hokey pokey and ring around the rosy and everyone moved past the outburst.  Weird.}  
This afternoon was reading and cross-stitching and an elaborate game of "Calicraters" (aka Calico Critters in Rosie-speak), and researching photography (me) and baking a batch of Snickerdoodles because even though I'm trying so hard to lose weight, sometimes you just need to have a few baggies of cookies in the freezer to pull out for dessert.  To cap off a really nice day, I got to have a scheduled phone date with a friend who is also using Ambleside Online to homeschool her son and it was a joy to talk and visit and laugh and dream about ways we can be alongside each other in our journey of homeschooling.  

We took our old couch to the dump when we moved.  It was completely awful and I had never liked it that much to begin with.  In our ten years of marriage, we had one couch I liked well enough but it got pretty ruined in our move across the state and we got rid of it a long time ago.  We have been really hoping for a leather couch and Jesse has been watching Craigslist.  We had a little money set aside from Christmas gifts so we could jump if he saw something.  This afternoon a beautiful set was listed a few hours away from us in lovely condition and for a price that we couldn't pass up.  Jesse flew to his car.  The sellers are a retired couple and they are downsizing from a huge house to a smaller apartment and they said they would hold it for us until five so he drove over the pass and got there right in time.  I haven't seen them yet besides pictures since he's on the road as I write, but oh I can't wait.  It's a couch, a loveseat, an ottoman and an armchair with brass nail trim! For less than we thought we'd have to pay just for a couch!  What?!  I think they will be really beautiful in the new house.  

Speaking of which.  I haven't posted any pictures of our new house yet because it was too emotionally charged for me to "put it out there" until now.  But I'm ready.  Here are a few pictures I snapped when we were there for the home inspection last month.  Obviously the belongings aren't ours but the idea is there.  The kitchen has a lot of knotty pine and the room that will be our master bedroom is floor to ceiling pine as well.  There are a lot of other places with the same pine (a hallway of pine with built in cupboards).  It's really lovely.  Four bedrooms and two bathrooms, an upstairs living room and a downstairs family room.  Two beautiful woodstoves, a big covered front porch, several outbuildings, and a pasture.  2+ acres with trees, even some young fruit trees, and a gorgeous view.  There were several times I'd drive out around this house and think, "I really wish I lived in this specific area of the valley for its beauty."  It's exactly what we dreamed of in a million tiny ways and I truly never expected we'd find each of those little things we hoped for in one place.  We are scheming about how we will make it "ours" over time but I'm really thankful to be buying a home that is already beautiful in so many ways and only needs a few things up front (e.g., kitchen floor and countertops updated and we will replace the roof).  That's pretty different from our last house that was 100% project and even then there wasn't much hope of it ever being what we really loved.  We are feeling so thankful for the ways the Lord has gifted us this home that will very soon be ours.

chilly

We are hibernating in our little den with the blizzard swirling all around outside.  The snow has been piling up all day and we have had an accumulation of at least a foot in the past week I think.  Several inches today.  Pipes in our friends' homes are freezing and our pellet stove is running nonstop to keep our place warm.  Schools are canceling and delaying and church was just a handful of whoever could drive themselves there safely.  I am missing all the children and praying that they are warm and healthy enough in the middle of this terrible cold, knowing realistically that many of them likely aren't warm and some are hungry, especially if schools are canceling.  I am thankful that the Lord promises He is everywhere, that He is good, and that He has good things for His children. We can trust Him with these little ones even when we can't get to them. 

The sun catches red hair and glints while she pulls on her boots and I smile to see how fast she is at dressing herself for outside play these days.  The season of their complete dependence on mama for snow clothes has passed and I remember just last year and the years before when it took a half hour or more just to get everyone out the door to play and then another half hour to change and clean up when they came back in.  It's much simpler now with the two older ones being almost independent, leaving just Rosie needing more help.  

I have had time this past week to reflect and plan a little about our school year. I am really satisfied with the curriculum choices I made for my first grader and kindergartner.  Ambleside Online continues to be a really good application of Charlotte Mason's methods for us.  I love the big scope of each school activity we do.  The history reading is beautifully focused on ideas rather than trying to retain facts and details.  The literature is beautiful: introductions to Shakespeare plays written by E. Nesbit, gorgeous fairy tales written in English of the past, Just So Stories by Kipling that have us laughing out loud, and this term we are reading AA Milne poetry which we really enjoy.   School lessons are each very short (though there are several of them each morning) and we are done with our formal subjects by noon every day.  Morning lessons even include sipping tea and nibbling snacks while listening to Gregorian chants this term.  Our math curriculum is fast paced and full of variety but I see a lot of fruit already in the ways the girls are applying the concepts to much higher levels than I would have expected for their ages.  I glanced ahead in the book and it actually introduces the concept of multiplication in a few weeks.  Even their spelling has greatly improved and I can see the groundwork being laid for excellent comprehension of spelling rules for the future.  

My new venture is to have a slightly more guided afternoon with several activity choices during quiet time especially since we are cooped up because of the cold.  Because both girls are pretty independent for chunks of time with cross-stitch now, it's possible to include that as well as nature notebooks and reading in our afternoon.  I really loved listening to this episode of A Delectable Education this week which outlined why afternoons are kept mostly free for the child to ruminate and explore and play. Our afternoons aren't always like that because of our participation in Kingdom Kids, but the days we are home I seek to have that mentality. Although we are having discouraging struggles with behaviors with one of our children right now,  I am really thankful that school continues to be a time of joy and delight together.   

I've been planning my personal booklist for 2017 and have some books there I've been wishing to read for a long time.  I am wishing to read a few more nonfiction stories, like memoirs or biographies.  I read a couple last year (The Boys in the Boat, for one) that I really enjoyed and felt like my read world was expanding in interesting ways, so I have added a few of those, although my list is still fiction-heavy. I was trying to decide what my favorite book from last year was and I thought it would be easier than it is because I read a lot of really great books.  I think it is between Swallows and Amazons (by Arthur Ransome) or Gilead (by Marilynne Robinson) or Shiloh (by Helena Sorenson, no -  not the Shiloh about the dog-  this is the first in a series set in another world).  All three stories are excellent and completely different from one another so it makes them hard to compare. 

Our membership in the Read Aloud Revival has been worth the money.  This month all three girls are participating in a daily read aloud challenge, and besides printing out a calendar for them to track their reading, I haven't had to do anything! My favorite thing is when I see them reading to each other but they can even read out loud to a stuffed animal or a pet.  A couple days ago Lyddie read out loud to our dear friend and neighbor when she came by for a visit. This week we will get to participate in our first "author access event" where kids can interact live in a webinar with a famous author.  This month's event is with Andrea Davis Pinkney who has written several great picture books. I can't believe some of the others that are on the schedule too:  Jon Klassen, who wrote the hilarious stolen hat picture books, Jane Yolen (!), Tomie DePaola (!), Marla Frazee (!), Jennifer Trafton, Andrew Peterson...so many favorites.  If you are a mom or a teacher and haven't checked out the Read Aloud Revival, the free podcast is worth listening to regularly!

January is ticking by and we are awaiting the official report from the appraisal of our new home.  It may be another ten days based on the deadline but we are praying that the report would get in this week so we can keep moving along with buying.  In the meantime we are dreaming and planning about the few things we hope to accomplish in the house before moving in - paint colors?  Kitchen updates?  We'll see!    

an october day in the forest

  

I was so eager to go for a hike and a nature outing this week and we planned to visit a nearby state forest.  My hope was that we would walk awhile and then settle somewhere for lunch and then we could play and maybe I'd even get to read or knit while the girls romped nearby through whatever natural playground we found.  

We parked along a deserted forest road and trekked up a trail in the quiet woods.  Douglas firs, Ponderosa pines, and cottonwoods towered above us as we picked our way carefully among a rocky uphill section of the trail.  Around the bend and it was a spongy floor of fallen pine needles carpeting our way.  We spotted elk tracks and droppings and many deer trails veering off into the trees and meadows.  A jay scolded us from a treetop before flying off, irritated at the racket made by children excited to be outside.  Lyddie triumphantly identified a Doug fir by its needles.  Millie found a walking stick and followed close to her daddy, while Rosie tried to cling to my hand and carry several sticks and pieces of bark at the same time in her other hand.  I snapped pictures here and there and shushed continually to no avail.  Any creatures that might have been in the woods fled far before us.  

Jesse taught the girls last week how to lay snowberries on a hard place and stomp on them to make them pop loudly.  I laughed to see the antics so reminiscent of Independence Day "pop-its" but occurring entirely naturally.  He said this was something he used to do as a kid in the woods where he grew up, and he was a little pleased to impart something happy from his childhood to his own children. 

We made our way to a picnic area and sat watching the robins in the bushes across the creek while we passed the grapes and chewed our sandwiches.  There were some complaints about the cold, and apparently a sweatshirt and a woolen sweater weren't enough for the children (though to be frank, it wasn't just the children complaining of cold; apparently my strong mountain man no longer likes to be cold.  I was sure to find every opportunity to tease him).  My disappointment was real that we had to wrap up the day early, right when we were arriving at my favorite part.  But first we roamed the creekside and I was pulled  - "Mama!!  Close your eyes!  Let me lead you" to forts made of branches the girls constructed with Jesse last week while I was home sick.  We balanced on logs and noted how much higher the creek had risen since the previous week, and marveled at the increased color in the leaves as well.  There was such a riotous display of beauty in the hills there, even the usually-yellow aspens had decided to put on red-orange gowns to compete.  Although we were really just a half hour's drive outside of town, it was such a different landscape that it felt like we had traveled much further.  We will certainly return to this forest and my grand plans are to be sure to bring hats, mittens, and coats and to hopefully have a campfire over the afternoon.  We will have our very own outdoor classroom if I can help it!  I think it is quite likely that the days we spend in this way are the most formative and important thing we might do in these young school years.  They are certainly the most favorite thing we do.