fountain of youth

one book i'm so glad i kept from our homeschooling days is anna comstock's handbook of nature study.



i read this today and found it to be so true among the various people i've met:

"it is not years which make people old;
it is ruts, and a limitation of interests.
when we no longer care about anything except our own interests, we are then old, it matters not whether our years be twenty or eighty."

book review

a recent library treasure is this book published by the metropolitan museum of art.

titled, "can you hear it?" it features 13 songs on cd that accompany art pieces and challenge kids and parents alike to hear what the composer was trying to convey in his piece.

we enjoyed this book (and boys will be boys, pete and mike liked the war one best). highly recommended!

i remember when....

i remember, when i had just turned 13, and my brother (who was 10) came running in tears to the softball field where my sister (who was 14, almost 15) and i were playing a softball league game. i remember like it was yesterday how he came right to the chain link fence, and held on to it, as if to support himself as he told us the grim and shocking news that thurman munson, catcher for our beloved new york yankees, had been killed in a plane accident near canton, ohio.

what my mind couldn't comprehend then (why was he in ohio when he played for new york? i remember thinking...) is all answered now in a new book that i'm currently reading (hurriedly so i can give it to my brother when he stops for the night in 3 days)

i don't remember ever hearing about his family, or even thinking of them. just what it meant to us as yankees fans. we knew the team would never be the same. my sister's favorite is mentioned in the book (greg nettles) as is my brother's favorite (munson's good friend, bobby mercer). but not my favorite, bucky dent (so far..i'm only on chapter 10). so funny how time can change perspective....

i love to read

what's beside my bedside right now (click on the links for more info):

the first book, of course, is the Bible. it's got everything: it's the ultimate love story (for God so loved the world), it's got mystery (His ways/thoughts are not ours), suspense (what will the rapture really be like?), family drama (check out joseph...), even war. not to mention life giving/sustaining substinence. it truly is my life blood right now.

your money or your life: current book club selection. i give it a b-. it's geared (from a secular point of view) more towards people who actually have a paying job and making detailed lists rather than a stay at home mom of 7 trying to be a good steward of the fruits of her husband's hard labor. but it does make me want to work to live rather than live to work and it will eventually be good fodder for discussion with said husband once we have our own place and i don't have to share conversation time with his parents and 7 children all clamoring for his attention what little time he's actually home.

a blessing of toads: forget about the title. this book is a compilation of sharon lovejoy's columns for country home gardener magazine (a favorite no longer in print). short, fun, and they always make me smile.

prayers of my heart: my prayer journal. i usually do my own, or print a form off the internet but this has become my favorite. simply laid out, and easier to keep track of (and separate from) my regular homekeeping notebook.

what's age got to do with it?: i haven't started this one yet, but is lent to me and highly recommended by my friend deb. i'm hoping it will be encouraging and not discouraging. after all, my wii fit age is 33!

goops: reading bits of this with the little boys at night. a manners manual (with cartoon illustrations) originally written in 1900, this is not only enjoyable, but nice that you can sweetly reprimand your kids in public in only a way they (or someone who's read the book) would understand. "looks like the goops have been here!" you can say when they've left a mess. "you're not turning into a goop are you?" when they start to have a narcissitic meltdown.

esther: i've been waiting oh so patiently to do this study since my dear friend lea
wouldn't do it before i left tally.... you can download the videos (for a small fee) off the internet, so i'm going to have the girls watch with me. can't link to lifeway.com because their site is down.

the home book: wonderful compilation if you're trying to explore the myriad possibilities of decorating a new home. if you ever get a new home.

what's beside your bedside?

saturday review of books

i first met the amish when i was a senior in high school. i thought they were quaint and fun to observe and try to snap the occasional picture. i didn't give much thought to the "why" behind how they live, and i certainly looked at them more as a cult rather than followers of the One True God. this book amish grace stems from the school shooting at nickel mines, pa (about 20 miles from where we now live). but it covers much more than just the school shooting. it quickly covers the amish background from their time of martyrdom around the time of the protestant reformation to the way they currently adapt technology to fit within their principles (rent freezer space from non-amish neighbors, phone shanties in their barns, computers for their business that have no games, internet access or extras that run on batteries). their example of forgiveness is unsurpassed and humbling to those of us who have had reason to forgive someone for a wrong committed. it includes other stories of amish forgiveness including one we personally witnessed of a member in our church involved in a car accident with a buggy (the joel kime story-you can google it if you don't want to read the whole book).

this was a great read, affecting the way i think of the amish, think of forgiveness and look at the world through the filter of the Bible. for you homeschoolers, you would be interested to know that the amish really do use the pathway readers many of us used in homeschooling. the 8th grade book speaks specifically of the amish martyrs and why they need to be in the habit of forgiving. we still have our whole set, as it's one the kids asked to keep when we were weeding through our homeschool material for our massive yard sale last year.

for more saturday review of books, join semicolon here.

Poolside reading

O. got her hair trimmed too, I forgot to mention the other day because I didn't have a picture. She made sure I had one today :) (note to self: get closet doors for their room before the next self-picture taking session).
Yesterday I did something I haven't done since we moved here 3 years ago. I sat by the pool and read while the kids swam. P. was very content to play w/kitchen stuff in his little pool, while the bigs had a rousing game of "let's-see-how-long-we-can-keep-the-beach-ball-in-the-air-without-it-hitting-the-water" (one of my favorite games). I browsed briefly through the Plow and Hearth catalog that came in the mail, even though we don't utilize a plow or a hearth, and I read another chapter of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Apparently considered classic high school reading, I had never even heard of it until I started homeschooling. It's recommended for K. to read this year so I thought I would read it first.

off to visit with the 1st of our group of guest swimmers today. stay cool!