Ordinary Time

We spent the day down at the Museum of Science and Industry. We hadn't been since before we moved, and children were starting to complain. Plus, my niece if visiting right now, and it's always fun to show off our town. The only downside was that when I looked at my membership card, it had expired. I guessed that I had figured that I would renew it when we finally got down there. I wasn't terribly excited about paying for the membership. I cannot tell you what a nice surprise it was when I went up to the desk, explained I needed to renew my membership, and have the person at the desk tell me my membership was good until next summer. It seems I did renew it last summer, but I neglected to update my address, which explains why I didn't have a new card. It was very, very good news. I spend a lot of time kvetching on here about museum "family" memberships which are anything but, and add a penalty fee on memberships for families who have the gall to have more ch...

This is the question that greeted me in an email which arrived in my inbox. Just this question, nothing else. Without qualifying information, I'm left wondering. Do I present such a negative view of parenting here on this blog that the writer needs some clarification about it? Or is it simpler than that, and the writer only sees the hard and misses the good, and wonders if anyone can enjoy such an endeavor. Or am I reading far too much into the question (which I admit is entirely possible), and the writer just wants to know if parenting a child not born to you is enjoyable. It seemed like an interesting question to answer, so instead of replying privately, I'm writing my response here. The simple answer is yes. Yes, I do enjoy being an adoptive parent. I enjoy being an adoptive parent to the same degree that I enjoy being a parent. They feel one and the same to me when it comes to the daily ins and outs of life. Some days are good, some days are challenging... this is true fo...

So I plan all these art projects, thinking everyone will enjoy them. In reality, there is usually one person who gets upset and stomps away from the table. Yesterday, I had a new record: two in tears and one who was so frustrated she was growling. The art project wasn't even that hard. I don't know what that was all about. I have now met Emmy's farrier, and we are on his schedule for December, here at our house. Boy, the barn better be done by then! Emmy is barefoot, and stand very nicely for the farrier. The P. family gave us a small greenhouse that was given to them, but they never used. It has been sitting in a pile by the side of our house since we moved. Last weekend, we finally got around to trying to figure out how to set it up. We made it work! Now, I need to get out there and plant a new crop of cold hardy vegetables. I have found a new sewing store in nearby Geneva, that I am madly in love with. The Halloween candy that was collected this year is now...

Dear Geography Matters , I have used your materials for years... at least over ten, and possible for even longer. I have loved them, and your geography resources have been mainstays in our homeschool. I guess this is why I feel so very disappointed today. My children and I have spent the last year and a half going around the world (from the comfort of our dining room table) and learning about many different countries. As well as reading about each country, we've listened to music, read folk tales, done crafts, made food, and done some extensive map work. Your Uncle Josh's Outline Maps have been hugely helpful as we create our travel journals. If there is not an individual country, there has been at least an enlarged region map for where we currently are. Until today. This week, we left Asia, and headed to Africa, with our first stop being in Ethiopia. We had done our continent work earlier in the week, and I admit I hadn't looked carefully, but I assumed there would...

This was a pretty easy year, costume-wise, but as I looked at the younger group, I realized I had sewn five out of the six costumes. All with no last minute sewing panic, as young children loitered around, asking when they could get dressed to go begging for candy. Go me! Keeping previous years' costumes pays off. Of course there were pumpkins. And the completed faces. Gomez also got to play. He loves being let out of the crawl space, and allowed to sit out on the front porch for a while. He's starting to be a little worse for wear, since it seems one of his arms has fallen off. Some child decided to be creative. Yes, that is Gomez, stabbing himself with a sword, using his own arm. And now, on to the costumes. We had one princess, three elves, a civil war officer, and a lumberjack. Y., G., and L. were all elves, because of having spent all summer listening to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I've been working on these cloaks for several...

Today, P. and I went to the post office and sent a very large tuition check via certified mail to Canada. With that done, she will be officially setting sail in mid-January. Six months or so ago, when P. first discovered Class Afloat and expressed interest in going. All we could see were dollar signs. It is incredibly expensive, and being through a Canadian school meant that US financial aid was not going to help. I honestly had no idea how on earth we would afford it. It seemed impossible. We could tell that P. was extremely interested, and very much wanted a chance to do this, so we kept taking the next step. I also prayed more than one prayer that if she was going to be able to do it, God would really have to make the money appear somehow. And then J.'s job was eliminated, and he spent the summer between jobs. That did not seem as though it was going to help in getting P. on that ship. Yet we kept moving forward with doing what needed to be done. The end of summer saw J. e...

I was asked on one of my posts about indiscriminate affection about my opinion on volunteers in orphanages. Not the appear and disappear variety, but ones who are in the country and have made a longer term commitment to visiting orphanages. Since I have spent the last forty-eight hours realizing I didn't have anything to write about, I'll take a stab at answering. First, know that I'm hardly an expert. My main experience is raising children who have been damaged by the combination of broken attachment combined with false attachment to visitors. I know what the results look like, I have some ideas about how my girls developed the coping skills they did, but I'm not sure I have actual definitive answers. If I were to have a chance to talk with people who were volunteering in an orphanage, and who were committed to going regularly, Here are things I would say. 1. Be careful with gifts. I know everyone's tendency is to want to shower a child with the things that t...