Some Words Just Don't Work for ME

Some words are very easy to say. Accidentally, luckily, coincidentally...  Those words are just not that helpful. They don't tell the whole story about the fact that things happen as a logical sequence of events that I've started OR that someone other than myself have started. Doesn't mean I'm a fatalist, it just means that the words accident, lucky and coincidental are used way too much.
Some words are more easily acted out. Entitlement, Deserve.. Really, we all deserve and are entitled to a miserable existence on our own (alone) in this tiny planet with no mercy or hope. Really, all have done hideous things to some extent and are entitled to punishment.  I just do the best with what I've got and am trying each day to be incredibly grateful instead of entitled.
Grace is a better word, and love; humble, generous, polite, providence. So much easier to use those words more readily, or for that fact, just act them out on a regular basis to get the muscles working.  Yep, a grace muscle needs exercise.  These muscles work for me and I do the best with what I have thankfully trying to learn something from it all.

A Precious Perspective

I never really expected to be a mom. I totally gave up on the potential of being married based on the massive amount of debt and failure I'd accumulated in my short 28 years of life. But then miracles happened and I did meet a Godly saint and married him as soon as he asked me, or shortly there after. I progressively submitted and have since then stayed married to the afore mentioned saint.

After a regular amount of time, in my eyes at least, we became parents to a healthy and easy child. After another reasonable amount of time, we, I reluctantly, welcomed twins. They were all excessively healthy and bright children. Easy… too easy. I never had to work to have children. I had to work some more than I would have expected to keep the children growing and learning, but everything was and is very easy.

So many people work for years to have children and then some others loose those precious gifts so quickly. Others watch as their babies die from diseases that drag on and suffer so long. But, I get to enjoy these young people, not yet tax payers; and yet do I really appreciate what I have? Does anyone ever appreciate what they have? So much of the time we move so fast or check out so quickly, then don’t get to see how precious these people are to us. Why is it that so many parents don’t realize how fast their children are growing and so much happening that they don’t get to slow down and pay attention to the simple events of the day?

And, yet, do I submit their lives to fate? Nope, but I catch myself so often trying to control everything. Doesn’t God love them more than I do? Aren’t they really His? So, yep, I accepted some odd chance to teach them according to the simplest method I could have discovered by providence from The Well Trained Mind about classical education. I’m continuing to teach them this coming school year because is just feels right and is expected. Easy…

So what’s classical education? According to one mom at seven's heaven: "The object of this kind of Christian and Classical education was not merely the accumulation of knowledge. Instead it was to equip a whole new generation of leaders with the necessary tools to exercise discernment, discretion, and discipline in their lives and over their callings. Despite their meager resources, rough-hewn facilities, and down-to-earth frontier ethic, they maintained continuity with all that had given birth to the wisdom of the West." She quoted George Grant.

I go against what is common in my life and choose to be a wife, home-maker and home-schooling mom. And, some day I’ll go on to what ever else is set for me to do. But I’ll do it with few regrets of having missed something. Living a life without would have, should have or could have moments isn't so easy, but it's a goal.

Many Highlights of Rome, but one stood out

We often found ourselves trekking from one site to the next around dusk and observed large swarms of flying creatures in the skies. I had seen similar sites in Austin Texas during my four years there. I believe the swarms were bats. This you tube sketch shows what I saw in the sky over Rome at dusk each day.

Winter observations

The brightest moon I've seen just went to bed after keeping me up in the middle of the night. The owl that was whoot-doot-doodling on the tree outside my window around 2 am. is gone to bed too. There are still reindeer "food" and snow angels out there in the yard though. A beautiful new day awaits...

Soccer Started!

Both boys enjoyed their soccer practice last night and I enjoyed them on the same team. There was not as much running on the first practice, but it was a beautiful evening in Chicagoland. My little Pooh went off merrily to an Indian Princess meeting with Daddy and returned late very bouncy trouncy.



We finished ancient China and the Olympics study, and now have done a few days of ancient India too. We've studied the definition of astronomy and some information about the Sun. I'm prepping for a study of Mercury next week and the continuing saga of Rome through the end of SOTW I soon. I'm anxious to move on to the life of Jesus and the prophets because of my Fall Bible study in Acts. I'll be even more ready to get to a study on Byzantium because of my background in Turkish studies.



BTW, I was at the library (God bless those librarians in the Children's section of our Village library) and read a wonderful children's story from the non-fiction section called The Donkey of Gallipoli: A True Story of Courage in World War I. The artwork was wonderful and made me more interested in visiting Cannakkale some day on a trip to Turkey. I hadn't been there before because I don't usually visit sites of horrific destruction. I didn't have to see the Twin Tower site to know it happened and thousands died. I won't need to visit Auschwitz to know that millions died. I won't need to stand on Omaha Beach to know that freedom is paid by the lives lost. I certainly didn't go out of my way to find the site of death on the Aegean coast where so many died during WWI, but may now just to honor those who paid with their lives.