Praying for Bones?

This from friend Amy.... :)

Something to do....Something to love.. Something to think about...

One of my favorite quotes is from Charlotte Mason. She said to give our children "Something to do, something to love, something to think about."

One of the things in our life that gives us something to do...love.. think about is our dogs. Actually in this picture I wonder what Ralphie (the dog) is thinking about.. :)

This is our family. Here we are, this is us. We have a strong affection for our dogs and other people's dogs as well. It is amazing when I think of all the areas of life they have touched for us. One of my favorite memories was when we did a co-op class with our local homeschool group. I had taught several semesters (as did other moms) and the last year when I chose a topic to teach on I let my boys help me pick. We chose dogs. We just love dogs and it was a blast.

What fun it was to brainstorm all the ways we could learn about dogs. I had a wonderful 'class'- about 6 kids (including my 2) and all around ages 10-12 or so. What a fun age! We read Jack London, we played Dog Bingo, we read St. Francis. One of my favorite days was when we read from the Bible and CCC about the relationship between God, man and the animals. We learned that man had dominion over animals, but also responsbility. We learned that animals had no soul, but we could love them. It was a nice day.

Another day we did a Charlotte Mason style 'object study' and our big dachshund Boomer was the 'object'. We studied his body parts and deduced what they were used for by his ancestors (long years, tough claws, etc). After the study, we got busy and Boomer made his way around the classroom. Soon we saw a mylar balloon slowly moving across the side wall. Boomer had found the valentine's balloon, obviously left by the preschool class, that had a small Snickers bar attached to the end. He was stealthily trying to steal it away to a private corner. What a laugh we got!

I think of all the group learning we have been involved with over the years, that co-op class gave us the most *real* learning. We all cared about the subject and all shared in the joy.

Thinking, too, of our dog-sitting business. How we learn about our clients and their dogs and their needs. How we care for our sweet but sometimes demanding dogs. And how we realize they are just dogs, but we love them anyway.

Just thinking about how dogs have been a real part of our learning. And now that I am adding some pictures here, had to get a dog one on line. :)

Break Again!

I got kicked off my blog!

There is a lot going on here right now.. including an increase in our dogsitting business, lots of projects of my boys and a dh who is working from home full time now. I am finding I need to focus more elsewhere, so am going to go on blogging break for a while. (I had to make it official or I always seem to be drawn back...)

Hope to be back soon.

Have a happy August and God Bless!

Ode to My Journal.... May I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

I am having a love affair with my journal.

When I return to it, I wonder why I have stayed away so long? Why do I neglect it? Why do I leave it laying fallow in a pile of papers so it can barely breath?

My journal is faithful. It never changes. It is always there when I finally come back to visit and share.

My journal is not pretty. It is a spiral notebook. Though I did get a quality one with a lovely lavendar thick cover. My handwriting is not as pretty as I like either. And my posts are not eloquent. Many are short. Some I can barely read. But it is the stuff of our lives.

When I am feeling down or lost or losing my compass, I can turn to the pages in my journal and see a glimpse of what the boys (and I) am learning on our journey. When I take the stilted entries and tap them into to my Word document (sorted by subject areas) I see credits taking shape.. conversations of the past weeks forming into a cohesive mass of learning and thinking and see the paths we have taken and how they all interrelate. It allows me to see how much we do, and I cannot possibly write it all down.

I promise, Oh Journal, not to neglect you again.

Well, unless I get busy.

But I will return.

I Love LOTR

Thank goodness.

I have wished I liked Lord of the Rings for forever. My boys have been thoroughly taken in and are now reading the histories Tolkien wrote about the peoples, etc after having finished the books. My oldest received the movies for his birthday. It seems everyone loves LOTR and I never could get into them.

I think my problem was I started with The Hobbit. I couldn't read it- just was not into those creatures with the furry feet. Then I started Fellowship of the Ring and it began with.. Hobbits. My boys told me to keep going, it would get better. So, after three false starts, I did and am now launched firmly in and enjoying every moment. I love Tokein's writing style and we are having lots of discussions about the books: the style. plot, and his Catholic themes (can we see them?), comparison to Star Wars, mythology, the times in which he wrote them (because of course I have to read some bio material on any author I read). I also found his essay about faerie stories- what constitutes a 'real' one and what is not. (talking animals don't a faerie story make, according to JRRT).

A whole new world.
My dh wants to read them now.

So glad I didn't give up!

Tightening My Pegs and Decorating My Idea Box

I have been looking at how our home is operating... what is happening, getting done, not getting done.. and how we all are interacting.

I find our pegs are a little fuzzy. Our schedules are running a bit counter- me up at the crack of dawn and in bed by ten, the boys both nightowls and sleeping as late as I will allow....

After some thinking I had a chat with the boys. We agreed to get back to a daily meeting time, sort of as an anchor. We still do most of our learning throughout the day, but this will allow me to share things with them. We agreed to all work toward this time. They can sleep in two days, but the other two must be up (fairly) early.

So, we put an anchor in the middle of the day- noon. To meet. I want to return to daily scripture readings and will also use that time to share reading aloud and ideas from my Idea Box. (more on that later)

I am going to return to something I did for years- a theme of the day- just to make sure I get to it. Monday Math, Tuesday Art/ Music, etc. . Today we read "Screwtape on Time". I love Screwtape. :-)

I laid out my workout and on/off dogsit morning schedule, worked in our daily Mass day, our house cleaning day, etc. It feels good to get these pegs tightened up a bit. I love pegs!

Now, my idea box. In a previous post I mentioned how I have all these ideas swimming in my head- I needed a place for them to roost!

I created a beautiful Idea Box. I started to buy it but couldn't find what I wanted. I wanted something happy and pretty. I am tired of my white binder.

Now, when I have an idea- big or small- it goes in my box. In there now are scraps of paper, printed out emails, articles I want to share, etc. All those floating ideas are now captured.


Here is a picture. It is the yellow box. Really the lid to a box my file folders came in that I covered with pretty wrapping paper.

Here are some things pulled at random that sit in my box atm:

-Article from Catholic Answers on embryo research called Another Attack on Humanity
-Share items from Murderous Maths/Family Math/Websites to share
-Boys draw cartoon charactures of various dog breeds for possible use on greeting cards.
-Boys begin a VG portfolio with print outs of the reviews they have written, favorite posts on blogs, website descriptions of fav games, etc.
-Research history of middle east wars and Isreal- relate to today.


While I am in the picture up load mode.. here are our new digs:

We gave the office to my dh who now works from home and we took up shop in our front living room/music room.

And I am not sure how this picture got on the camera. Some backwards dog knees. lol