Veronica Boulden

  On our way home from the Jeep Jamboree in the Maine mountains, we stopped at Mount Washington. Dwayne and the girls took the trip up the mountain. That's a picture of our black Jeep (bottom right corner) heading up the mountain. Note: I did not go up the mountain. I stayed in the cozy visitor's center, and I shopped for stickers and socks, and I edited my paper for graduate school.  So a great time was had by all! 

We attended the Maine Mountains Jeep Jamboree this year. It was bitterly cold at registration on Thursday, and it was raining for a time, but then a beautiful rainbow showed over the parking lot full of Jeeps. Early Friday and Saturday morning, the mornings of the Jamboree, it is fun to see all the Jeeps lined up according to which trail they are heading out on.  Then you head out towards your trail following your guide.  There was a lot of mud. We all got stuck several times and needed to be wenched.  I thought the tires looked exactly like chocolate doughnuts with all the mud caked on.  We encountered several obstacles and had to spend quite a lot of time in the woods waiting for each Jeep to either make it through the obstacle OR be wenched out to try again.  But the fall woods were beautiful and there were beautiful views. We're thinking about which Jamboree to attend next year...   

One of Avril's recent works of art-  The first lines in The Hobbit  on one side and a hobbit door on the other.  Notice the piece on the wall behind her.  This is a beloved, reoccurring theme. 

Adele is currently drawing Michelangelo's Pieta .  These are the kinds of things that I walk in to the room to find my daughters doing, and it takes my breath away.  And then I give glory to God for the beauty that fills my life.  This image means a lot to me, personally.  I was a high school freshman, a year older than Adele is now, when I saw a photo of the Pieta in my history textbook.  We were studying the Middle Ages and even though the textbook called it the Dark Ages and had a decidedly negative view of that period, the age had a radiance that couldn't be suppressed, and my imagination was set aflame!  The photo of the Pieta in the textbook was grainy, black and white, and tiny- maybe two inches wide and an inch high.  Nevertheless... I wept.  Right there in history class with my head bent low over the text.  I don't remember being embarrassed. Interestingly, I remember that it was like I was hardly there to be seen. I understand now why I was so affected.   I was b

 Adele got braces today!  So since Norah's have been on far longer than planned,  and Avril's, too, have taken slightly longer than expected,  that's all three daughters with braces at the same time.  Who could have predicted this triple orthodontic event?  Not me! That's certain!   It's like when three planets align once in a century or something...  only it's cosmically more expensive than that!   

 I took Norah to see Hadestown for her twentieth birthday gift. for both of us, it's the third time we've seen it. Neither of us are bored of it. It's our absolute favorite. And we can and do talk about it for hours. And it just makes it more interesting to compare and contrast the differences in how one actor or pair or group plays it. She read CS Lewis's "Myth Became Fact" aloud to me on the way. Both of us see Christ in Orpheus, our own souls in Eurydice, and our love and appreciation for what Christ accomplished for our souls is deepened by watching this beautiful myth on stage. 

"'Why should women want to know about Aristotle?' The answer is NOT that all women would be better for knowing Aristotle... but simply, what women want as a class is irrelevant. I want to know about Aristotle." -From Are Women Human?  by Dorothy Sayers Joy.  That's the only way I can describe how it feels to read Aristotle for graduate school.  It is pure joy. The joy is a gift and a confirmation I am on the right path.   It's also the hardest content I've ever encountered, but it is, without doubt, the most worthwhile and fulfilling (next to Scripture, of course).  I sense the Lord urging me on.  All truth is His.  Through Christ, everything that's His is mine.  God sits enthroned over all the earth- even Parnassus.