Encouragement

As a mom of teens, I find myself in the car more often than I prefer. I am learning to reframe this time as an opportunity to connect with my older children, hear their hearts, sample their questionable taste in music, and listen to their discourse with friends. Sometimes, when there is bickering or deadpan silence, I fill that void with great podcasts. Recently, I listened to a podcast called  "Human Dignity and the Classical Tradition". As my eldest daughter and I traveled the winding, rural roads that lead to town, we listened to Winston Brady, from the podcast Developing Classical Thinkers, explain that "classical education asserts the proposition that human beings are image bearers, having been created by God with the capacity for reason and contemplation, the drive for creative self-expression, and the capacity to make free, meaningful moral choices".  I glanced over at her several times throughout the podcast, delighted that she comprehended the content being shared as a result of the education I have been providing her for the past three years. Neither of us would have understood concepts like syllogisms, premises,  Latin words like Imago Dei let alone natural law versus common law. They were foreign concepts only a short time ago, but they are now, rich with meaning. 

 While homeschooling is HARD, there is a richness that I am only now beginning to enjoy as I watch my littles transform into young people who can think critically and know who they are. 

Currently: January

Enjoying

The slow and unscheduled pace of Christmas Break 

Listening

One Name (Jesus) by Naomi Raine

Personal Reading

Ordinary Discipleship: How God Wires Us for the Adventure of a Lifetime by Jessie Cruickshank JJessieCruickshankess

 Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education by David Hicks

Five Life of our Anti-Christian Age by Rosiaro Buterfield

The One Year Chronological Bible (Currently in Genesis).

Hide Your Children: Exposing Marxists Behind the Attack on America's Kids by Liz Wheeler

From Seed to Bloom: A year of Growing and Designing with Seasonal Flowers by Milli Proust 

Reading for Teaching Homeschool Co-op

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide to Six Shakespeare Plays by Peter Leithart

The Taming of the Shrew. - Shakespeare 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

 Delighting

In learning how to REST. 

I thinking I have finally learning how to do this well. It means putting my feet up and reading a great book (even in the middle of the afternoon), taking a walk with my dog through the meadow near our home, journaling, taking long showers, sitting at my vanity when doing skin care in the evenings, going to bed at a reasonable time, and having lengthy conversations with my husband at the table after dinner instead up cleaning up.

Thinking 

About how to work from home more effectively .

Currently

 De-junking and organizing all the DOOM piles that have been mounting in my home for the past couple of months. I am not very good at dealing with paperwork. Arrrggg. 

Learning

Shakespeare. There is a reason people are still reading his plays 400 hundred years after his death. 

Dreaming 

About the space I want to create in my garden for my flock of Call and Muscovy Ducks. 

Baking

Courtney's  GF Chewy Ginger Cookies  The recipe can be found on her Website: Strawberry Cream Kitchen

Planning

 Semester 2 for my Challenge 1 Students. 

Longing 

For my husband to put up bead board in my kitchen and install a copper pot rail. 

Christmas 2023

 

                                                                             Happy New year!!!!!