7 Quick Takes Friday

*1* Friends

This week I spent a couple hours on the phone with Jean the Bean- good friend from FTS days, catching up. She is doing lots of mural painting, raising kids and is a Financial Peace junkie, too. They are newly settled in the Pike's Peak area and loving it.
Spent an afternoon with a group of new friends from church doing a study on Parenting. It's good stuff; loving your kids intentionally and offering positive choices. Spent this afternoon with my friend from Alaska who loves classical ed. She dropped off kids for an overnight and we spent a too much time yapping about school and talking with her fil who is moving here and has great stories of Alaska and living life.

*2* Gardening

The lettuce is going full throttle and we've been eating salads daily and giving lettuce away. The rhubarb is 3 feet high and we are making a pie tonight in honor of my Gramma Rummel who served rhubarb pie (along with cherry, apple and peach) every.single.night. of any visit we ever made to her house. It was guaranteed to put you into a diabetic comma and I didn't really care for it. I've found a recipe I like better with meringue. Still, great memories of Gramma who could have won awards cooking. It was her craft.

The rest of the garden is looking good. The beans, parsley, tomatoes, squash, melons, peppers, cukes, zukes, and some basil are all up and growing. The berry bushes, grape vines are thriving and the strawberries are loaded. woohoo. Miss. Flower keeps asking when I am making crepes again-maybe when we pick our first strawberries.

*3* Books

Continued Climbing Parnassus. Simmons states that the 3 purposes of education should be:
To teach us to earn a living. To teach us to be good citizens. To help us understand the meaning of a good life. He goes on to quote Robert Hutchins who writes, "a system that denies the existence of values denies the possibility of education. Relativism, scientism, skepticism, and anti-intellectualism, the four horsemen of the philosophical apocalypse, have produced that chaos in education which will end in the disintegration of the West." Thought provoking.

*4* School

The older kids continued working on Latin, Logic and Math. They'll be done soon and ready for a break. We are using Traditional Logic this year (from MP) and did books I & II in a year. It was a rigorous challenge, one which KB has loved and Feche-boy has really struggled with. Viking Man to the rescue (insert superman music here).
The littles continue to do math daily. We are going with Horizons 1 & 4. Cub just finished Copybook 3- (beautiful last poem at the end) and we'll start "First Fun" from IEW on Monday. I purchased Usborne mazzes and dot-to-dots at the regional conference and Cub is loving the maze puzzles. These books have been staple early ed books for us. Great thinking skills packaged as pure fun. We love UBAH!!

*5* De-cluttering

Tackled the girls room. My wonderful sil, who has pretty much single-handedly clothed and shod Flower for 6 years in beautiful and fashionable clothing sent along 4 more huge bags of clothes and another box of shoes. College Woman brought stuff home for summer and stored it in that poor getting little room, off-loaded books, CD's and clothes from the study into the same area as she got ready to go over-seas, KB did all sorts of scrapbooking for the grad party, add in Flower's usually purses and backpacks loaded to the gills, and KB's actual living in the room and you can imagine the royal mess. Spent 3 hours in there and it still needs work. The good news is I was able to unload 2 bags of clothes/toys on my friend Anne who has a littler girl, Miss. R's stuff is all sorted in a corner and Flower's summer clothes are in her drawers. Phew.

*6* Movies

Watched part of "Dances with Wolves" this week. I haven't seen it since it first came out and it is very poignant. Couldn't bring myself to re-discover if everyone gets blown away at the end. I like the characters too much. Gotta love the 80's hair that Kevin sports. How much mousse did we use?!?!

*7* Bible Study

Was so good again this week. Genesis 22. Abraham buys a burial plot for Sarah. Through her life the child of promise is born. Through her death, the Israel rights to the land are birthed. It's amazing how much we all come away with by looking at the scripture together. Viking Man uses a Navigator's approach: read, observe, apply. Very simple, powerful and effective way of really being able to see the Bible as applicable to one's life. Good, good stuff and, as always, great fellowship.


For more quick takes, hop on over to Conversion Diaries. Always a good read: http://www.conversiondiary.com/ From her post today: "Remember that every single word you say to someone will either curse them or bless them." Mother Antonio.