Our Most Special Thanksgiving Blessing!

Tantalizing aromas were in the air; the many dishes were on the card table, the kitchen counter, and even on the top of the computer cabinet! Drinks were poured, candles were lit, and all of us had gathered to sing a hymn and offer a prayer of Thanksgiving.

Then the phone rang.

Who could it be? On any other Thanksgiving afternoon, we would have had no idea. But this one was different. After all, we had been on Baby Watch for quite a few days. I hoped that my guess was right this time, because every. single. time. the phone had rung for a month or more, I had thought, This could be the news.

I answered, pushed the "speaker phone" button, and—joy of joys!—heard my son's voice on the other end of the line, across the many miles. All the faces in the room lit up as he told us that Sarah had been admitted to the hospital and that this could be The Day!

After the call, we sang "For the Beauty of the Earth" and these words...

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth and friends above,
For all gentle thoughts and mild.

Lord of all, to Thee we raise,
This our hymn of grateful praise.

...held special meaning to me as we sang them.

We ate our wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, talked, cleaned up, talked, ate dessert, and talked some more...all the while, our far-away family was never far from our minds. But as the hours went on, there was no more news, and then a text from Ryan to Brian said that they would probably be going back home. Sigh.

Late on Thanksgiving night—actually it was after midnight, so technically it was Friday here—the phone rang again. I grabbed it and, again, it was Ryan's voice. Assuming they were back at home, we made small talk for a minute or two. I asked him what they were doing, and he said, "Just hanging out with our new son."

Peter Ryan had arrived on Thanksgiving Day after all! He was 9 pounds, 2 ounces (a big little boy!) and was 21 and ¾ inches long (will he be tall like his daddy?), and, most importantly, Mama and Baby are healthy and happy!

Ryan with his new son

Big sisters Eve and Nora in awe of their newborn brother

We have so much to be thankful for, not the least of which is our most special Thanksgiving blessing, Peter Ryan!

Indeed we sing, Lord of all, to Thee we raise,This our hymn of grateful praise!

Getting Ready For Uncle Tommy

My brother-in-law Tommy usually comes to my back door when my house is in total disarray. Now Tommy is an all-around great guy and we enjoy his company, so it's not that we don't want to see him or anything. But Tommy (who lives just a few houses away) drops by when I have decided on a whim to paint the medicine cabinet, and its contents and all of the little bottles of paints of possible medicine cabinet colors are spread all over the kitchen floor. Or when we're in the middle of a craft project. Or the ironing board is out along with several weeks (months?) of ironing piles.

Often, when we've finished a Ten Minute Tidy, Bekah will say, "Okay, Uncle Tommy can come now." (But he never comes after a Ten Minute Tidy.)

So, we're expecting Uncle Tommy today.

Yep, the conditions are just right.

This morning, as Ron was getting ready to return to work after four days off, he dropped a pill on the floor and bent to pick it up. Then he said to me, "Oh...I didn't think our floors ever looked like that." I think that was a compliment. I think. Well, I'm going to take it as such. (If it wasn't, he really should have been more careful, don't you think? He did not need to drop that pill or get eye-level with the debris on the floor or gasp at what he saw there. He didn't.)

What a wonderful four days it was! (The debris on the floor only proves that we were doing more fulfilling things than tidying and vacuuming.)

• A bounteous Thanksgiving.
• A lovely day of a little shopping, Thanksgiving leftovers, and watching A Christmas Carol.
• An exciting day of getting down the Christmas decorations, of four little guests, of subs for supper, of unwrapping the new ornaments, of tree trimming and mad libs and games and Miss Mary Mack.
• A day with our church family and more decorating and turkey pot pie and a little relaxing and a Hallmark movie.
  
  
  Glimpses...

Today ten minutes is not going to cut it. The agenda includes vacuuming (in case Ron drops his pill tomorrow morning), mailing a package, lots of tidying, and World War I. (The World War I part is for school. We're not at war here. Unless you count the war on dust bunnies and crumbs.)

And tomorrow I'll be back to tell you about our most special Thanksgiving blessing!

Choosing Gratitude

This is a re-post from last November. I need to be reminded again and again...

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For years, I have kept this quoted passage tucked within the pages of my Bible. I can't even remember where I first found it. I only know that it pierced my heart so deeply that I wanted to keep it near, to be able to read it again and again and again. My human heart is so prone to complaining; yet I know that it should be filled only with gratitude. So when I find myself murmuring, I return to this place of eternal perspective and fall on His mercy. Lord, forgive me for forgetting your amazing grace.

Our culture is riddled with a poisonous spirit of entitlement. We always think we deserve more. We’re disappointed with our family, our neighbors, church, the waitress, the sales clerk, and the department of motor vehicles. Ultimately, we’re disappointed with God. He hasn’t given us everything we want.

What madness! If only we could see our situation clearly—even for a moment. We deserved expulsion; He gives us a diploma. We deserved the electric chair; He gives us a parade. Anything less than overwhelming gratitude should be unthinkable. He owes us nothing. We owe Him everything. When you realize you deserve nothing better than hell, it puts a “bad day” in perspective, doesn’t it?

Christians in Sudan—who’ve suffered unspeakably for their faith—are deeply grateful for God’s daily blessings. But us? We whine and pout.

Thankfulness should draw a clear line between us and a Christless world. If the same spirit of entitlement and ingratitude that characterizes our culture characterizes us, what do we have to offer?

If I grasp that I deserve hell, I’ll be filled with gratitude not only for God’s huge blessings—including my redemption and home in heaven—but also for His smaller blessings: sun, rain, a beating heart, eyes that see, legs that walk, a mind that thinks...And because Christ allowed Himself to be crushed under the weight of my sin, I’ll enjoy forever a clear mind and a perfect body...Never believe anything about yourself or God that makes His grace to you seem anything less than astonishing. Because that’s exactly what it is.

~Randy Alcorn, The Grace and Truth Paradox, Multnomah Publishers 2003, pp. 33-35

A Gran(d) Weekend

Over the weekend, I reveled in being a Gran.

Her sweet little three-year-old voice sounding over the speaker phone, Eve chatted with us on Friday night. She told us about the snow at their house, and about the episode of "Pa" (aka "Little House on the Prairie") she had watched that day. And can anything be sweeter than hearing her recite her Bible verses? I doubt it.

Little Nora (21 months) is finding her voice too. What a delight to hear her say, "Hi, Papa" and "puppy" and "Vee" (Eve)!

If only those little girls could see our faces glowing, our ear-to-ear smiles, when they talk.

Then our house was full of joyful noise when Kristin and Brian and the close-to-home grandchildren came for their usual Sunday visit. Lots of happy chatter among the "big" kids as they ate and played games and pretended and ran outside. It was a good toddler day, too, as Benjamin smiled and sang his way through the afternoon.

After lunch, I asked to hold sleepy Alaine (11 weeks) who decided to indulge her Gran with a long snooze. So while the girls served coffee and apple pie and pumpkin cake, I snuggled with Alaine and sneaked countless baby kisses from the top of her sweet-smelling head.

We were hoping that a certain little boy was going to increase the "grand" population over the weekend, but we're still on Baby Wait.

If you get the opportunity to be a Gran, I can highly recommend it!

The Morns Are Meeker

The morns are meeker than they were—

The nuts are getting brown—

The berry's cheek is plumper—



The Rose is out of town.



The Maple wears a gayer scarf—

The field a scarlet gown—

Lest I should be old fashioned

I'll put a trinket on.

~ poem by Emily Dickinson

A Matter of Perspective

When I came to pick up Bekah after her piano lesson last week, there was the sweetest dog in the car next to us in the parking lot. Kati and I admired him as he wagged his tail and gave us doggie smiles.

I went inside to get Bekah, and as we walked out, one of the store employees walked out just ahead of us. He was walking toward the doggie's car...and he was looking and smiling.

Me (as one dog lover to another): Isn't it cute?

Music store guy: Yes, I had one like it when I was in high school.

Me: Awwww...

Music store guy: It was olive green.

Olive green?!!!

Turns out he was admiring the little sports car the dog was riding in!

Living Books for Thanksgiving

Our family loves to learn via living books, so I often gather books from our own personal library, supplemented by our public library findings, to go along with a holiday, a season, or a time period or topic that we're studying. Then I'll load the chosen books into a basket, or place them on a low shelf or some other conspicuous place for easy perusal.

Here are some favorites from our Thanksgiving stack...

An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving, by Louisa May Alcott, is the amusing story of a family's Thanksgiving celebration that gets a bit complicated when the parents must leave at the height of the preparations in order to attend a sick grandmother. Pure old-fashioned charm.

The Thanksgiving Story (Alice Dalgliesh), is the story of the first Thanksgiving as seen through the eyes of Giles, Constance, and Damaris Hopkins, children who came over on the Mayflower. This book is simply told, simply illustrated (by Helen Sewell), and is a perfect introduction to the history of Thanksgiving.

Three Young Pilgrims , by Cheryl Harness, also tells the story of the Pilgrims from the perspective of a Pilgrim family, the Allertons. Typical of Harness's children's books, this one is colorfully illustrated and full of interesting maps, diagrams, timelines, sketches, and factual tidbits in addition to the main text.

In Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember, Barbara Rainey narrates the history of Thanksgiving on two levels. If you're reading to younger children with limited attention spans, you can read only the passages in larger print; if your listeners are older, add the sections in smaller type. Either way, you will read the story from a distinctively Christian perspective. (As I shared with you last November, my own favorite part of this book is the accompanying CD of Thanksgiving hymns!)

Margaret Pumphrey's Pilgrim Stories, edited by Elvajean Hall, is my all-time favorite Thanksgiving book! Read through these seventeen easy chapters, and you will learn parts of the Pilgrims' story that you've never heard before! The inspiring narrative begins in 1606 in Scrooby, England at the home of Separatist elder William Brewster, and continues through the first year of the Plymouth colony. We have read Pilgrim Stories aloud many times, but I am always, always inspired by the difficult choices, the personal sacrifice these men and women made to be able to worship God in Spirit and in Truth.


Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving book?

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This post is linked to Children's Book Monday at A Path Made Straight which is a fabulous place to find delightful children's book recommendations. On more than one occasion, I have searched for one of Elise's featured books at my local library...only to find that it has already been checked out or put on hold! When that happens, it's usually because Kristin has beaten me to it!

Mother/Daughter Christmas Shopping Trip: 2010 Edition

The annual Mother/Daughter Christmas Shopping Trip was yesterday. While these events are typically marathon days (leave before dawn, home before midnight--lots of shopping and walking and coffee in between), this year we were all home safe and sound by 9 pm.

(You don't think it's because the mothers and daughters are getting older, do you? Naaaaa...)

Kati caught us drooling over Pottery Barn's window display.


This young thing joined us for the first time this year.

We love this tradition...and are grateful for another year to be together.

An Autumn Nature Walk

Well, some of us walked...

...and some of us ran...


...but we all found some autumn treasures...


...and enjoyed the wonder of God's creation on a perfectly lovely day.

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After our walk/run,
we sketched in our nature journals...


...made sun catchers with our colorful leaves...


...and crafted these dear little yarn pumpkins to decorate our Thanksgiving tables.

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*** Instructions for these darling pumpkins can be found here.

At make and takes, they are apples; we simply changed the color of the yarn to make ours pumpkins.

Seventeen!

(Already?)

The Ten Minute Tidy

Over at the Nesting Place, The Nester has been taking us through a series of 31 Days to a Less Messy Nest. I have been following closely, because I love tips for neatness!

When my house is tidy, I can pretend that it is spotless. But even when my house is clean(ish), if it is also messy, then I cannot convince myself that it is clean(ish) no matter how hard I try! (We all have our issues.)

Yesterday The Nester invited us to share our our own tips for a Less Messy Nest, so I decided to let you all in on one of our best secrets: the Ten Minute Tidy. Here's how it works.

We come to the end of a productive homeschool day. We set a timer for ten minutes. Bekah pushes start, yells Go!, and we all spring into action and tidy up everything in sight!  

We begin in the kitchen/school room/sitting room. We gather our coffee and tea mugs from the table or our reading area, clear the counters, load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, and pick up the stacks of books we've been reading and return them to their rightful places. We tidy loose papers and mail and stray shoes, plop the pillows back on the loveseat, and put away the craft supplies. All the time we are moving as quickly as possible.

No cleaning is taking place. We're just making things presentable.

If time remains, we all migrate into the living room. (This is usually a quicker clean up, as we have usually not spent the day in this room.) We put away DVDs and magazines and the newspaper, making sure that all surfaces are clear of Stuff That Shouldn't Be There. Then, we'll do a pass through the dining room, but since that is our least used room, it generally is tidied lickety split.

Unless the house is extremely messy, a Ten Minute Tidy can put it to rights. (In the case that it is extremely messy, we may decide to set the timer for another ten minutes and have at it again.) And keep in mind that, for us, ten minutes is really thirty minutes since there are three of us working.

We might call for a Ten Minute Tidy...

~ before Dad arrives home from a day at work
~ when a friend calls and says she'll be over to drop something off

~ when my brain is not at peace because of the visual distractions

~ before an actual cleaning session (because who wants to clean around clutter?)

My sense of order is restored and then I feel free to move on to another task or another part of our day or greet my friend or welcome my husband home. It is amazing what a difference ten minutes can make!

Celebrating His Grace

Thirty-eight years ago today, the Holy Spirit wooed my heart and, as a twelve-year-old girl, I accepted God's gift of grace in the person of His only Son, Jesus Christ. And oh how great I have found His grace to be!

I continue to be overwhelmed by His mercy!

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Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:

Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:

In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

Colossians 1:12-14

Teaching Notes: Grammar

Grammar has never taken a front row seat in our homeschool.

I have taught grammar to each of my children, but only for a season, never in an all-year-every-year style. I believe that if children hear correct grammar used in the home on a daily basis, and read an abundance of great literature, they learn it!

During a "season" of grammar, I may work through a section of a textbook or a workbook. We have also learned some Grammar Songs, and I have had my students do a ten-minute-per-day exercise in Daily Grams. I admit that I am the Grammar Police in my home (it's a tough job, but somebody has to do it ~grin~) and point out incorrect usage when I need to do so. I must also admit that, although my high school senior's spoken and written grammar are excellent, she just might give you a blank stare if you asked her to identify an infinitive or an indirect object.

When I read this article on teaching grammar at the Simply Charlotte Mason web site, I silently cheered. (Hey, my husband may not have understood if I had loudly cheered an article about grammar.)

I loved the analogy the author used...

"You mean I don't have to teach English grammar all year long in every grade?" Esther was astonished.

"You're already teaching the correct way to use words every time you have the children read or write or tell or listen. 'Grammar' just means the set of rules for speaking and writing a language." Beth smiled. "Think of it this way: Let's say you wanted to learn how to play chess. Your household was full of chess players already, so you had ample opportunity to watch them play and try your hand at playing too. Would you learn how to play correctly?"

"I would think so. I might need a little coaching now and then, but I would pick up a lot on my own," said Esther.

"Exactly," replied Beth. "Now, if I asked you to recite all the rules of chess, you may not be able to do that right away. You could probably come up with many of the rules just based on your own observations and experience. But if I insisted that you formally study the rules, it wouldn't take you very long to learn them, especially because you were so familiar with chess anyway."

"That's true," Esther agreed.

"It's the same with English. Your children are learning the proper way to use that language every day, by hearing and reading, telling and writing. You have to coach them sometimes on proper use, but they're picking up a lot," Beth explained. "Along the way, you will want them to formally study the rules, but it's not going to take them twelve years. So use the early grades to let them get familiar with the language in all the ways it's used around them, and save the formal studies of grammar for when they're older."

Click here to read the article in its entirety.

And while you're there, home educator, nose around a little at Simply Charlotte Mason! I think you'll find some treasures for your homeschool!

October Is...

...pumpkins

...colorful mums

...outdoor projects


...an apple donut for breakfast

...a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino

...TV treats

...an outdoor picnic

...a birthday bash

...and another

...a wedding

...autumnal ambiance.

October.
The most beautiful month of the year.

Waiting For Her Piano Lesson

It's so hard to wait!