A Worthy Life

planting life

Last week at Emmanuelle's impromptu sleepover, I was kept on my toes making sure it was one to remember. On top of special snacks, a run to the drug store for a guest toothbrush, a late night movie, and full day of fun, this momentous occasion called for a token craft that would serve to remind of the memories made long after the fun was over.

With some pre-painted pots already on hand and some newly bought crepe paper, we created little faux pinatas holding secret treasure. After filling with sun warmed earth, we planted paper embedded with seeds and sprinkled with water.

I've been thinking a lot these days about this great and sometimes heavy responsibility we carry as mothers. How it isn't enough to dress our kids up pretty or polish up their external manners if we aren't just as busy working on growing beauty and strength on the inside.

The last few weeks, while filled with memorable moments of joy and glimmers of victory, have been tough. I've been at times discouraged at the fruit I see in my children, wondering if I'm planting well. I've been challenged to evaluate my approach to many aspects of my mothering and teaching (because they go so daily hand in hand), studying to improve the things that don't come easy for me, wanting to model better the things that are hard for them.

These days slip into years and I realize that the discipline of each day grants a harvest that will exposed through the years. What I do and teach in these moments becomes who they are in that moment when they are released for life on their own.

While I cannot do the becoming and I cannot do the choosing, I can prepare the soil and I can plant the seeds. Seeds of kindness, seeds of justice, seeds of truth, seeds of creativity. I can give them the opportunity now to grow the rewards of self-discipline, of hard work, of an earnest education.

Because I want to present them to the world as more than a pretty face with a keen sense of fashion (not that this wouldn't be the cherry on top! ;). I want them to go forward towards their life purposes with a wealth of knowledge and the confidence that it will take to go against the prevalent tides of apathy and passivity.

And that? That right there is going to require work, mama. Hard work and discipline, but most of all a deep and abiding love that drives you to your knees and drives your children to your arms. This life isn't all about me. So much of it is about them and how we invest our love and life for theirs.

I don't want to arrive at the fast approaching end of eighteen years thinking, where did the time go? I want to redeem it now, in moments of flower pot crafts and heart to heart conversations in the kitchen, in discipline for their studies and personal passions, in whispers of correction and embraces of forgiveness.

Because I only have them for such a short time and one soon day will only observe from the distance, watching to see...how will they bloom?

embracing life, with two hands

I'm doubling up on linking today because, really. Isn't that the mama's life, doing a little of this while finishing up a little of that?

I homeschool my kiddos and so I teach them reading, writing, and math plus a little of the other necessities in life. Including but not limited to cleaning toilets, baking pumpkin bread, the location of Australia, what looks goods with camo pants, and how to brush your teeth without leaving a trail of toothpaste in your wake.

Those are the big and little things.

But the main thing? The main thing is stuff like the above picture, Emmanuelle and Mama connecting our hearts with God's truth while I occasionally stir the noodles boiling on the stovetop. Last night she was preparing to go to Awanas with the older girls while the boy headed to basketball practice. (His special date nights with God are on Fridays.)

Whether my kid grows up to be a math professor, a fashion blogger, a professional toilet cleaner, an NBA baller, or a Sunday school teacher, I want them fully prepared academically and spiritually.

Because, as followers of Jesus, their future vocation is only secondary to their calling: missionally connecting with others and sharing God's love.

Hopefully, the ability to double up on duties is in the genes!

Today, I'm double linking to 5 Minute Fridays and Embrace the Camera!

this story:this life

After recently starting a Little Women homeschool co-op with my friend (using this delightful find at a thrift store), I realized that children absorb more and retain more when literature takes the leap off the written page and lands smack dab in the practical throes of real life. When we read about work baskets and Beth's biscuits in chapter 1, we set about making our own - little sewing kits for each of our own girls and flour biscuits from scratch. The girls associated much more with the individual characters from the book when they too were able to do as they had done.

While reading The Princess and the Pea for their writing lesson last week, my older girls balked as usual. It's not the stories they mind as much as the writing that comes after. Hoping to bolster their spirits, I secretly schemed to make a multi-layer mattress cake, complete with hidden mini peas at the bottom. I revealed the finished product and had them guess what this particular occasion might be. After some confusion and a few clues, they finally guessed that it was from their recent writing tales. Hopefully now they'll associate the story with scrumptious delight and apply some of the latter to their upcoming rough drafts!

 

bird banding

Ever since we witnessed the miracle of life through the hatching of our chicks, I have found within myself a sensitivity to and desire for the observation of all of nature. Except, perhaps, as found in the excavation of hundreds of dandelions from my lawn. :( Last week we went with a homeschool group to observe conservationists as they caught and banded birds for the purpose of understanding their migratory patterns and health and survival deficiencies.

To say it was educational would be an injustice. The experience was thrilling, a true outdoor classroom where each discovery is the lesson and personal curiosity is it's driving force.

Who knew blue-jays (and most other smallish birds) play dead when placed on their backs? Or, that woodpeckers have such long tongues? Who knew a robin's belly stays swollen even after laying her eggs so that her skin can still warm them? Or that birds have depressions near their breasts to hold fat deposits for the long flight home? Did you know that porcupines climb trees? Or that little snapping turtles can grow to be huge in a matter of months?

Sure, we could've read about all this in a textbook or answered these questions on a worksheet but touching and observing and absorbing stores it all rather quickly and ensures that it won't be easily forgotten!

little women at work

I was not cut out for homeschooling.

Strange admission coming from an (almost) veteran homeschooler? Maybe. There are no doubt others who revel in the up-at-the-crack-of-dawn lifestyle and schedule their every hour and minute to optimize the learning of any and every subject. Trust me, I know many who should receive Teacher of the Year awards every year and have a front page write-up in the New York Times (or, the Washington Post, as your bent might be ;). Waiting for Superman? She's here and rocking her red tights. Even with all the academics, including the two foreign languages her 3 year old is studying, she still finds time for her kids to ski and skate and dance and swim and make tofu and learn 2 instruments. Every single week.

And, I applaud them, I do. After catching my breath and picking myself up off the floor.

There is another breed, however. And I dearly hope I am not it's only representative. We/I try  scheduling our every hour and find that most days our math flows over into our writing which makes us late for reading, making us very upset to have to rush through history before we eat lunch in, gulp, gulp, 4 minutes. We/I stress about the fact that our budget only allows our kids to be in one activity at a time, wondering how they'll ever compete in a generation gone mad with competition. But we console ourselves by knowing that there's a work for Jesus only they can do, with or without an advanced calculus completion before 8th grade.

These days, we plod faithfully on, taking one day, one step at a time. I study my children as they study arithmetic. I wonder how this academic foundation will prove invaluable to them in their futures. We swim and skate, one a great deal and the other free, albeit without an instructor. I masquerade as that, with encouraging suggestions such as, "get up off the ice, you big baby!" and "stop holding on to the sides!", inspiring bits I've picked up from Don Cherry.

We bake and we clean. We play and we fight. We forgive and live to carry on another day.

I may not be cut out for homeschooling but I want to stay committed to learning. Not just for my students, but for myself. Learning a little more every day how to deny myself, love a little more, laugh a little louder, and fall down with grace in the areas where things are still a bit slippery for me.

I'm no Superwoman, just the proud mother-teacher of four children intended for great things in this world, with or without the gift of (foreign) tongues.

to everyone who asks, "why homeschool?"

"Why-why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?"

The teacher laughed. "You aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in? And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table?"

"Well, for goodness' sakes!"

"What's the matter?" asked the teacher again.

The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be a grown up...

~excerpt from Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfied Fisher

ellers ana: back.home.to.school

This one is the typical oldest sibling: friendly, outgoing, and helpful. Probably because of her constant desire to please and do what she's told, she had to be coached through her session. A few of the poses are her own, like the angelic clasping of her hands. That pose in particular speaks volumes about her spirit.

In grade 3, we are looking for her to further her ability to work independently, further foster her love of reading, and be able to know her multiplication table by memory. She will be assisting in picking the direction and subjects of some of her studies this year since we've seen her excellence and passion really come through in areas that she is already interested in. In the spring we gave her a book on dogs and already she can identify every breed she sees and can rattle off a litany of facts about them.

Since this mama wakes later than the kiddos, she is the first to run to me with open arms and an ear splitting grin. She is starting to understand that her sisters and brother are looking to her to be an example. Monkeys see, monkeys do. Though halfway to nine years, she is sensitive and so in need of her mama's reassurance and encouragement.

Yaz, we are so excited to see the growth and intelligence God is getting in your life! Welcome back home to school!

edie opie: back.home.to.school

The girl needs little to no coaching. I had to slow her down between poses just to be able to catch each one. She's a ham in front of the camera and her family, shy yet cunning in public. My mom would probably say the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. :}

I'm excited to see her progress this year in second grade. We've kept up our reading lessons this summer and the lightbulbs are really starting to go off as she realizes the real-life use of sounds and letters. Her true love is math and she rattles off the answers to addition problems like they're the alphabet.

Her joy is contagious and her hilarity a welcome relief to a mundane day. Her fears and worries are still there, lying in wait to steal from her the thrill of new experiences. Together, mama and daughter are combating these anxieties with God's Word, filling her heart and mind with the truth that she is more than a conqueror, that there is no fear in the presence of God's love. 

Welcome back home to school, Edie! Mama and Papa are so expectant to see the growth God gets in your life this year!

(you can click on pics to enlarge, mom! ;)

back to work/home to school

Today we're continuing to celebrate the birthdays of my Irish Twins, Eden and Jacob. Both are busy at work/play with their gifts and generously including the others of our quartet in their fun.

While we're at it, we're soaking in the last warm days of summer before the kids head back to school and I head back to work teaching them. Summer is my much needed break from school and I've been able to scratch quite a few to-do projects off my list, leaving the repainting of the garage doors to my husband. I didn't want to have all the fun! ;)

This morning I finished the backdrop of our back-to-school photos. I love the finished result, a compilation of thoughts and things special and unique to our family. The kids' loved seeing Despicable Me and our favorite quote: "Lightbulb!" is one I tend to borrow all through the schoolyear. Manu was feeling especially left out one day when I decided that the two of us should have our own little secret, just between the two of us. Someone broke the code of silence so now most of us know "1-4-3" means "I love you!" and we're all getting in the habit of saying it more often.

I'm looking forward to a little more structure in the fall. I know I thrive most when allotting time for all my duties, disciplines, and desires. Here's to hoping that includes a return to regular blogging, working out, volunteer work, and menu planning, among the many... :}

me + (you x 4) = good times

It feels like summer, even here at the (almost) north pole.

Summer = no more school, right?!

Well, a big break at least...right in the middle of our day to wander to the park, play fetch with a strange(r)'s dogs, and read Henry Huggins by the light of the noon sun.

Does life get any better than this?!

Oh, and for the sake of the truancy officer, here's proof that even with big, sunny-day breaks, my kids are still learning a thing or two:

1, 2 flush your poo
3, 4 poo no more
4, 6 toilet needs fixed
7, 8 call your mate
9, 10 what a great friend!