Monday, October 21, 2013

Dear Mom, I am, I can, I ought, I will.

week of  October 14 - 20

First of all, we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving, having an elder serving in our ward who is from northern Alberta. We enjoyed the excuse to feast, and the elders were very appreciative.

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For some strange reason, I seem to fall even farther behind with this blogging things (actually lots of things) when I am homeschooling. (hmmm). Good thing Fluffy and I are having a blast! He is really fun to teach and discuss with. He says his favorite subject right now is Plutarch. (Who knew I would ever get to study Plutarch? :o)

More homeschool highlights. . . .

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installing hooks to hang our bikes in the garage

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knitting for a service project

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practicing trombone in the great outdoors (his idea)

Rosebud is not quite so enthralled with ancient Greek biographers, and so this week we began “Letter-of-the-Week” activities. It has been super fun.

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A is for apples

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and applesauce!

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I feel like I pour all my energies into the teaching and feeding of these amazing people who live in my home. And sometimes when the day is over and the house is a wreck (more or less) I catch myself wondering for a moment if I do too much of that and not enough of making our home an orderly, beautiful place. But then the next day I do the same thing again, usually with a fair amount of peace in my heart.

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(I promise that no geese were harmed in the production of this post. :)

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Yep, I’m pretty convinced that my focus is in the right place for maximum joy. It really is the best job ever! I love being stretched mentally to help Fluffy through Shakespeare one minute and the next returning to my own charmed childhood as I color with Rosebud. I love it when Hummer gets in the car beaming and happy to see me and then hearing about the latest in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow or having him offer to teach me the Greek alphabet. I love late night conversations with my logical, deep-thinking Exacto and seeing his goodness expressed so clearly now that he is approaching adulthood. It is amazingly rewarding and really difficult at the same time. (notice I am focusing on the positive and certainly not mentioning the frustrations over dirty socks on the floor, heart-wrenching problems with a couple of aspects in our current situation, homework like crazy, impressive tantrums, running out of milk, etc.)

nature walk on Wednesday

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this is when they discovered the “corndogs”

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Exacto always has too much homework.

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this is when the corndogs exploded

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don’t try this at home

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snow on Friday!

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(no, school was not cancelled. it melted pretty fast. plus, there were no rainbows – why should they cancel school? haha)

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I would never have dreamed how fulfilling this work could be. I can hardly believe I was reluctant for a while to embrace it. So grateful I went for it! Thank you for teaching and encouraging me to make this my life’s work!

And yet, a weekend trip to Denver for Time Out for Women was very welcome. I loved getting to spend time with my church sisters and especially Suzie Q, who lives near Denver now. (sorry no pictures!) I came back refreshed and with new strength and perspective.

A huge thank you to DC for so calmly and sweetly letting me go, even though he is drowning in papers to write! He is so awesome!

Love,

Michelle

4 comments:

Amanda said...[Reply to comment]

Michelle, I am so glad you are blogging so we can keep in touch with our your lovely family is doing. I am so jealous of the snow!!! I am glad you enjoyed TOFW. TOFW really does serve a wonderful purpose to uplift woman and provide a refreshing renewal.

llamitanan said...[Reply to comment]

Love, love, love reading about your family life. The pictures are awesome too. Sure miss you guys! You make life fun!!

snbjork said...[Reply to comment]

Every time I read one of your blog posts, I want to hop in the car and come to play with you guys! You're always doing so many wonderful things. I love the way you and your hubster teach your children to be truly good and to work hard, but to also find joy in our every day lives. You're wonderful parents.

I loved being at TOFW with you. I can't believe we didn't take any pictures! I missed you as soon as I walked back to my car alone. Hope to see you soon!

Vauna said...[Reply to comment]

I love keeping up with your family via your blog. I love your thoughts on child-rearing.It's exhausting, and I, too, feel like all I do is feed them and clean up after them and do it all again. But it IS so much more rewarding than anyone else can know.