“God is not a belief to which you give your assent. God becomes a reality whom you know intimately, meet everyday, one whose strength becomes your strength, whose love, your love. Live this life of the presence of God long enough and when someone asks you, “Do you believe there is a God?” you may find yourself answering, “No, I do not believe there is a God. I know there is a God.” ~Ernest Boyer, Jr. (Thanks, Ann)

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

First Day of School!

Thanks Jessica, for taking this family picture (Daddy couldn't find us at 6am when he left for his 4th day of school).
We started today!! So much eagerness! Isaac peered around the corner early this morning: "Boo! I'm ready for school!" First boy up - that was good. We did sweet cuddle time: pray for the day, read/repeat Phillipians 4:4-9, read first 2 chapters of the Jesus Storybook Bible. Just as we started to cuddle on the couch, Peter saw a spotted fawn tip-toeing through our watermelon plant! The boys raced outside onto the deck to shoo it away and Ruby and I saw its twin startle in the field and then make a marvelous leap over the fence. What a fun sight for our early morning.
Then we did Breakfast Chores and since it was already 9:15 (ack!) I did the ta-da on their newly configured notebooks over breakfast. Whew.
Isaac and Ruby's enthusiasm made a slow go for Peter - but due to his very stuffy nose/head he patiently waited and plodded through his lessons and allowed for their "I want to do more, can I do more?" eagerness. Isaac is already on 54 of his 100 Easy Lessons - making huge strides. I'm so glad that he's doing Kindergarten now, at six. Good choice.
It was grand. In fact, they did school all morning, then played pretend school all afternoon!

Peter met Botany after lunch - taxonomy, binomial nomenclature. Whew, he's a trooper. But then we giggled through the Field Guide for trees and said the silly latin names for a few minutes to wrap up - I love my little learners.

Camping with the geese

We went camping last month. The geese were gross, but we still had a good time. We canoed and Peter had his first night-fishing experience - extremely, extremely exciting - didn't even complain about the bugs swarming him too near the light. What a marvelous child. Peter also gashed his knee in a bike wreck which led to a heroic wheel rescue by Daddy (we rather like camping sort of near a Walmart) and brave bleeding by Pete.

Isaac: "really, it was this big". Each of the kids got private "canoe with Daddy" time - and I read an entire Thoene novel - wonderful. We got poured on (first lightning/thunder and torrential rain camping!) and our handy daddy fortified the EZup so we could huddle in there and just dodge drips while we played Uno. We laid in the shade and slept in. It was good.