Current Novels

The novels the girls are currently reading for homeschool always go in the same place- on the corner of the table in the living room. Seeing them as I come into the room always brings me a moment of joy, and I give thanks. 

The Days After Christmas

The days following Christmas are some of my favorite days. There is usually nothing at all on the calendar for a span of three or four days, so we are able to spend the whole day however we want- at leisure or at work or some combination of the two. 

After spending the early hours of today quietly reading from the Gospel of Matthew, and some of the book Kingdom, Grace and Judgement by Robert Farrar Capon, and some of Brandon Sanderson's newest book Wind and Truth, I inventoried our fridge and pantries and planned our meals for the week like I usually do. 

Dwayne is in the habit of handling the shopping on Saturdays, so I sent him off with the lists, while I spent the next several hours inventorying and organizing several cabinets, drawers, and closets all over the house. 

As a homemaker, I find it very useful to open briefly inventory/ quickly organize every single space in our house, so that I simply have a better idea what's there. Having a mental picture of what things we have where makes the next several weeks/ months go much smoother, because I simply know what things we have and where those things are. The last several weeks have been so busy with such an intense focus on graduate school that I felt like it was time to literally take stock of my home again. 

But this inventory/ reorganization effort was also prompted by the urgent need to find a new home for all the card games and at least 1/3 of the board games that were piled up in the basement, because they had to come out of the wet bar area and find a new home somewhere else, since we recently got a fancy ice maker installed in the cabinets down there. This was one of Dwayne's Christmas presents to me. I love ice water, iced tea, etc. I use a lot of ice. So this will be a constant blessing. 

We decided to move all the card and board games to the hall closet upstairs, but that prompted a reorganization of all the drawers and cabinets in the wet bar area and the upstairs hall closet, too. 

We collected many items the girls don't use anymore to donate. We're setting things aside for friends, and the girls rediscovered some like-new paint brushes we'd totally forgotten we had in craft supplies rediscovered in one of the cabinets. In all, it was a very productive day, and I feel refreshed having a much clearer mental picture of our home heading into the coming season. 

For dinner, I used my fancy new pot, another Christmas gift from Dwayne, to make a fancy new recipe- chicken with tarragon cream sauce (made without any dairy or gluten). I played Taylor Leonhardt loudly, and sang out loudly while I cooked. Fact: Taylor Leonhardt is my favorite singer/ singer writer at this point. 

This new chicken recipe was amazing; Everyone agreed. It will go on our list of family favorites to have again and again. I served it with roasted carrot strips and with basmati rice to soak up all the delicious sauce. 

After we cleaned up from dinner, we played Cartographers, a game we rediscovered as we were relocating all those games today. While we played, we ate some of the gluten, dairy, sugar free treats I made yesterday- homemade almond joys and peanut butter/ chocolate balls. 

Now I am sitting up writing this post, enjoying the tree lights, while the house is quiet and dark. 

I thank God for today and everyday like it. 

I love reading for hours in my cozy pajamas on the couch under a heated blanket while sipping a cup of hot coffee prepared the way I like it. 

I enjoy spending uninterrupted hours caring for my home, so I can spend the next days/ weeks/ months living and working in well-organized spaces. 

I love having extra time to learn to cook something new for my family. 

I love eating delicious yet nourishing foods I made myself, and I enjoy basking in my family's praises over my cooking. I'm forty-five, and at this point, I've done enough to have experienced esteem and praise from various groups and people in public, but I find that nothing compares to the simple appreciation my family can show for the meals I make them. 

I even love cleaning up after dinner, especially when my family helps, all of us moving together and helping one another efficiently. 

And I especially love board games in this season of life, even when I lose badly like I did tonight. 

These days after Christmas are a blessing to my heart, and even when they are filled with much labor, it is labor that brings a much-needed reset before another busy season begins.  

 

Christmas 2024

On Christmas Eve, we had a late, large, luscious breakfast thanks to a gift box of breakfast items sent from Dwayne's boss, and we played a very competitive game of Catan. We attended church in the early evening and then made a meal of sausage, cheese spreads, crackers, grapes, etc. while we played Seven Wonders. After Advent readings, the girls opened new pajamas on Christmas Eve as is our tradition.

We had another big breakfast Christmas morning, finished our Advent readings, then opened gifts. I'll share pictures of a few gifts below. 

Norah got me a few records of poetry being read aloud. 

This one of Robert Frost reading his own poetry is particularly special since an old mentor/family friend of ours, who has now been gone for years now, used to tell the story about changing his major from Engineering to English after attending poetry readings at Frost's house as an undergraduate student at his college. I always wondered what Frost might have sounded like reading his poetry. Now I know! 

I usually buy a Lego set for the family. This year, I got the Mona Lisa. It actually has a Lego piece on the back that allows you to hang the painting! I love Legos, especially the things they make for adults these days. 

I bought the girls much-needed art smocks. Hopefully, they will put them to use and protect their clothing. The smacks they had were made for children, so they were hardly even useful/ hardly ever used anymore. I hope they might prove to be gifts for a lifetime. 

Later on Christmas Day, Dwayne and I worked together to prepare a dinner of prime rib, sweet potatoes, corn, and peas. I used Ree Drummond's recipe to make a sea salt rub with crushed tri-colored peppercorns and herbs for the prime rib. The girls said it was the best beef they'd ever had, and we all had seconds/ thirds. We'll enjoy the last of the leftover prime rib again this evening with other sides.  

Graduate School

Much of my time this week is dedicated to finishing my final paper for my current Rhetoric class for graduate school. 

This is my work station- liquids, socks, blankets, books, all are at the ready. 

Dwayne is making dinners this week to save me an hour or more of effort each evening and free me to simply get up from my work, eat, and go back to work again. 

My girls are still homeschooling around me during the days. Right now, Avril's taking her online art class in the classroom, painting along with her teacher. Adele's upstairs in her room practicing guitar. The girls are often on the couches in the same room with me doing math or logic or Latin. 

I still manage to keep the household throughout my breaks, washing dishes and switching laundry here and there to give myself something different to focus upon. 

I am certainly less attentive than usual as far as homeschooling goes, but my daughters are older and they are very independent and responsible. It's easy enough to see that they are on task. And I can help as needed. I stopped work for a few moments yesterday to help Adele straighten out a particularly long long division problem yesterday. 

Sometimes I wonder why it takes me so long to complete my course work, why I must set aside so much time, but maybe it takes everyone just as long as it does for me. I am comparing myself to some imaginary idea that I have about how long this ought to take in comparison to everything else I do in life. 

I also wonder how, if at all, I might save time and effort, considering all I have to do in addition to school, but then I consider the difficulty of the material- Aristotle and Plato. I reconsider the richness of the texts, and I decide again that the work I am doing is proportionate to how much I actually care. I absolutely love what I am learning. 

Sometimes it feels like every book I've ever read has been preparing me to read (and actually enjoy) Aristotle. The first book I actually read with intent to understand the material was the Bible, and that's where my education began. I know the Bible better than any other text, so I see connections to portions of the New Testament and insist Paul and James must have had access to some of these texts or at the least, they had knowledge of these Greek ideas. 

I see hints of Aristotle, too, in poems by Hopkins, novels by Lewis, and treatises by Charlotte Mason. Of course, all the great books are talking to each other, and to think- Even the Lord entered into this great conversation Himself, revealing to mankind all they could not determine through natural revelation and reason alone.  

The Lord I certainly using this work to fit me for a relationship with Himself. May all I am learning make me more capable of knowing, worshipping, and honoring Him with all I am! 

Collected images of our homeschool this week:

 

Be Serious Then Watch the Fun Begin

Last night, our Advent readings began again! 

Each night of December for over twenty years of Decembers, we have read from The Advent Book and we have looked up and read an Old Testament prophecy and its New Testament fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Then we place another ornament with these Bible verses displayed on them on the tree. Both of these items, the Advent book and the box of prophecy ornaments, were a gift from Dwayne's parents back when we were only a few years married.  This year, we've also agreed to add Malcolm Guite's "Waiting on the Word" to the nightly routine, so we will read a poem each evening leading up to Advent. Though our traditions are formally set and can be quite formal in tone, especially when we reading about Jesus's sufferings, it's usually a very casual time, everyone's in casual clothes or pajamas already. The readings often lead to quiet, intense conversations, but sometimes, the readings lead to outright raucous laughter. 

Take last night. Everyone was being sassy and sarcastic, so I read a portion of Aristotle's "Art of Rhetoric" aloud that speaks about insolence. Well, that only prompted everyone to act even more insolently, so the reading divulged into breathless laughter from everyone, especially me, and my anger over their extra insolence caused an indoor snow ball/ pillow fight. Note: I purchased a set of indoor snow balls last Christmas, and these sit in a basket near my chair for obvious reasons. I'm thankful for simple gifts of family and traditions and the heartwarming, funny memories made and those being made. 

Last night's range of moods and events remind me of a Lewis quote from "The Weight of Glory." Towards the end of that essay, he says that people can't always be solemn; we must play. But Lewis says our merriment must be of the kind that begins by taking one another seriously. Last night, our family's merriment was of the kind that began more than twenty years ago by taking each other seriously enough to gather and build a devotional tradition for every evening in December. I still remember that first Advent's awkward beginning. Norah was just a tiny baby, and what would she even remember of that Advent reading? Yet Dwayne and I honored one another by sitting on the couch with the baby, being serious when we were usually casual and light-hearted. We started something sacred. We read the book, looked up the Scriptures, and we ourselves had to hang the ornaments for our then infant daughter. Now I see that we may have done this for one another as much as we did it for her, and we may still maintain this tradition for one another as much as we do it for our kids. So now, our family shares that true merriment that comes, as Lewis describes, after we have honored one another by being serious. 

 

Decorating for Christmas 2024

We decorated for Christmas, as usual, the day after Thanksgiving, so that we are ready for our Advent traditions that start with December.  

At this point, most of our decorations carry potent memories. They are things the girls have made through the years or things we have been given by family and friends over decades of Christmases, so it's always a time of remembering and giving thanks as we unpack and place the items around the house, and the thankfulness and remembrance goes on all through the month as we move through the house all day long.

Avril crocheted this angel last year. She learned to crochet from a godly woman at our homeschool co-op. She also paper-quilled the tiny angel sitting next to it on the shelf a few years before that.  I bought her the paper quilling set as a reward one homeschool year for doing all her Analytical Tasks Sheets in Essentials at Classical Conversations. 

My college-friend gave me the first few pieces of our Christmas village. Through the following years of early marriage, I collected more. And now, the village decorates our dining room window sills.

The younger girls painted the winter-themed pictures on the mantle in previous years. 

Norah built that tiny clay nativity set. She sells these on her Etsy store, but my set is unique, since it includes two sheep and an adorable donkey. 

I purchased the pewter nativity in Boston, and I think that was the same year I was invited to try out for the Les Mills presenter team. With my health in a downward spiral in previous years, those memories of good health and fitness were once bitter, but now, they are sweet. Now that I am feeling better, I'm just thankful for the health I have, and I'm hopeful that excellent health and strength may return again someday. 

Every nativity set here represents some precious memory. I've had one of them since we were newly married. A few were made or painted by the girls during their young childhoods. The middle, miniature, wooden set belonged to Dwayne's grandmother, and it remains my favorite nativity of all. Much of our furniture belonged to Gerda. She and I had similar tastes. 

The bright yet potent red of poinsettias inside is always a welcome cheer to the dreary landscape outside. 

Dwayne always places the angel on the tree. Speaking of items gifted by family, my mother gave me that angel approx. twenty years ago. 

This year, we added a smaller tree with colorful lights to in our classroom, and we filled it with the over-abundance of homemade ornaments the girls and I have made at home and church and homeschool co-ops up to this point. We also put our Classical Conversations or collegiate ornaments there, and again, though the time for those things is past, we are thankful for the good things those institutions brought into our lives when we were a part of them. Norah and I made some of those decorations on the classroom tree when she was only three- four years old! That was a long time ago now, but also, it seems like just yesterday. 

The star on our classroom tree is the exact same star that was on my classroom tree when I was a teacher our church's private school before having kids over twenty years ago. I just kept my star in a small box with our other Christmas decorations until now. I'm glad to finally use it in my classroom again, glad it still works!  

Sitting up late with the tree lights just thinking or praying is one of my favorite things to do in December and January and sometimes February, too, depending on how long we keep the Christmas decorations up!