Essentials & Faces of History

This year, Moo was enrolled in a Classical Conversations Essentials class each Tuesday afternoon. This class covered grammar, writing and mental math games. The grammar and mental math time was good, but the writing time was GREAT. They used the Institute for Excellence in Writing curriculum, and focused on writing projects that covered ancient history. The accountability of the group was good, and gave Moo a lot of opportunity to read her writing aloud in front of the class.

For the last class day, a Faces of History event was planned. The kids each dressed up as a famous person from ancient history and read a paper that they had written in the first person...without saying their name. The audience--which was composed of parents and grandparents for this "grand finale" performance--then got to guess the identity of the famous ancient personality. Moo was Ramses the Great, and did a wonderful job.

A normal class day consists of diagramming sentences and labeling parts of speech with Mrs. Nickell.

Moo really learned quite a lot this year, and enjoyed the classroom time. Okay, she enjoyed the recess time in the gym the MOST, but that's okay.

This is a group shot of my Ramses, the biblical judge Deborah, Cleopatra, Sarah, Julius Caesar, King Tut and more...

If I don't watch out, she'll want to wear gold lame ALL the time. :)

Moo is really so composed in front of groups, whether it is speaking, singing or playing violin. She did NOT get that from me.

I'm so proud of my little Pharaoh.
Okay, except for that hard-hearted decision to not let the children of Israel go... :)
Ironically, this Faces of History event was held on Passover.

The Love Language of Quilts

My mom is a quilter. Anyone who knows me, knows that quilting is her THING. I would venture to say that it is her love language. After many years of counseling individuals and couples, psychologist Dr. Gary Chapman noticed a pattern: everyone he had ever counseled had a “love language,” a primary way of expressing and interpreting love. He boils these down to five love languages: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Dr. Chapman, however, does not know my mom. For you see, Dr. Chapman, there is indeed a sixth category--the giving of handmade quilts.

This is her expression of love to my beloved Sara:




Each picket is signed by an important friend, family member, loved one or mentor that is a part of Sara's life.

Sara's Send Off...Knitwit Style

So how does a knitting group throw a send-off for a dear friend who is moving to Africa? With tea, snacks, and the giving of a quilt, of course! No, not a knitted afghan...but a fun and whimsical quilt that was the brainchild of our friend and fellow Knitwit, Lisa. On the front are squares of fabric that symbolize different elements of our circle of friends, and on the back are squares that were customized by each of us for Sara.






It was a hit, and will be cherished always, I'm sure. AND--big news--Kate attended our Knitwit gathering! This was unprecedented! Woo hoo! We love you Kate--you can come and clip coupons all night long while we knit...it's okay with us!

Art, Silliness and the Girls

Well, today was the last day of co-op. Sigh. I was so looking forward to wrapping things up...but now I am feeling a little sad. We had a sweet group, and each of them absolutely LOVED when art time with Mrs. Kennedy rolled around each week. Below you will see some of their projects, and some of their silliness. :)

Fruit still life. Inspiration from Degas, using pastels.

This is their pose for the Veritas Press Timeline Card "The First Great Awakening". Long story--suffice it to say that they crack themselves up.

A favorite--Van Gogh's Sunflowers, acrylic on canvas. Love, love, loved this project.

This was our headless class one day. What a bunch of goofballs.

Choir Share in Chicago

YFVS and YNS Ensemble singers visited Chicago this weekend and met the singers from the Chicago Children's Choir.

Fun at the Rock & Roll McDonalds with Ericka & Logan.

Moo & Josie

Fun on the bus with Maddie

Angela & Moo

Moo's allergies were miserable that day, but despite the way she looks in the picture...she had a great time!

Belle always is laser focused on the director.

Watching the Chicago Children's Choir perform

They were also taught a couple songs by CCC's director. The first video below is a jazzy tune, and the second is a canon--of Mozart's I believe, to which they have added their own fun lyrics. Unfortunately, we had enough time to learn all the parts...but weren't able to put them all together. Maybe next time!

In Remembrance of Him

During Passover, we are to "do this" in remembrance of our Master. The "this" to which Yeshua referred was the cup and the matzah of Passover, but also the whole of the festival, and ultimately, all of life should be conducted in remembrance of our Master. Over the course of the festival, we remember the Master's early seder with his disciples, we remember the agony in the garden, the betrayer's kiss, the arrest, and the mock-trial before the Saducees of the Sanhedrin. We remember the trial before Pilate, the scourging, the curcifixion and the tomb.

Apropos to the theme of remembering at Passover is a passage from Abram Poljak's book Early and Latter Rain, as follows:

"For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world" (John 18:37). These are the words Yeshua spoke to Pilate at the end of his life, anticipating the death sentence from the mouth of the Roman. Decades later, Paul was in the same situation. Trapped in Rome, awaiting his execution, he wrote to Timothy: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7).
Regardless of what may ultimately await us - our first concern should be our task in life. That should be sufficient. Not everyone has the same task and same destiny. However, before God, there is neither high nor low, and our final end, whether in peace or in suffering, all is equally determined by Him who steers all fates. Everything is certainly in God's counsel, and we can neither add nor decrease a single cubit. Only one thing is in our hands, and therein lies the free choice of our faith: Messiah. We choose whether we will dutifully follow the Messiah or resist him. Our task in life - regardless of the profession or situation in which we find ourselves - is to bear the shield of Messiah, that is, to act as He acted. For this purpose we are born and come into the world. And our return to our Father's house may only be done "with the shield or on the shield." (Abram Poljak, Early and Latter Rain, Part 3)

~D.T. Lancaster, FFOZ

I Want My Daddy!

My kids love their dad. I'm sure if you are reading this, and you have children, they love their Daddy too. It's normal...right?

Well, Belle will literally forgo all sorts of fun and frivolity to simply spend time with Daddy. She frequently complains that she will be homesick for Daddy when we have to leave on Monday nights to go to our Keepers meetings. (Note: Keepers meetings consist of a bunch of giggly girls singing, crafting, eating and playing 3,000 rounds of "Honey if you love me, please smile"--my point is that it is not a torturing experience.) She would rather stay home and spend time with Daddy.

Tomorrow, we are due to go into Chicago with a YFVS Choir Share event. As Murphy's Law would have it, Moo may have to stay home if her predictable seasonal allergy response hits "critical mass", rendering her a goobery, itchy-eyed, swollen faced mess with a slight fever. :(

What is Belle's response? "NO FAIR! (Sobbing) I WANT TO STAY HOME WITH DADDY TOO!" And then, the topper: "YOU MADE ME GO TO CHRISTMAS LAST YEAR!!!" (This was said in an accusatory, loud tone...yes, at that time Moo experienced the "privilege" of staying home sick with Daddy, while Belle and I endured the "torture" of yummy food and piles of presents).

Sigh. I love that my girls love their father. I'm just stumped a little as to how to deal with this...AND I'm feeling a little like chopped liver. ;)

New Friends

A couple years ago we met a dear family from Michigan at a conference that we attended in Arlington Heights. We had some good conversation, exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, and went our separate ways. Fortunately, we have stayed in touch and been able to meet up a few times this last year. We have such a good time with them, and feel blessed to have crossed paths with them.

Gems

As we start to wrap up this school year, I wanted to share a couple gems we have found in our homeschool reading and viewing list. Beechick is a master storyteller, and adept at making the complex simple. The DVD series listed was a serendipitous discovery on Netflix, believe it or not.

Adam and His Kin: This Lost History of Their Lives and Times
by Ruth Beechick

Genesis: Finding Our Roots by Ruth Beechick

Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution: Vol. I, II & III

Gotta love Netflix to supplement the cable/satellite-less home!

Contrasts

To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heavens...

Life seems to be all about contrasts these days.

I am most in love with those who can frustrate me the most...willing to give up those I wish to hold closest...and desire to live by a standard by which I know it is just about impossible to live. I have found that it's easiest to just embrace the contrast...not fight it. (Lots of thoughts here...it's just that all of them are pre-verbal...)

Yesterday, I spoke to a dear friend who shared with me the horror and trauma of rushing her husband to the hospital that morning. He had a full-blown heart attack while in the car with her. He was rushed from the curb into the operating room, where the doctors discovered his main artery was completely blocked. He looks like he will be okay--we are so thankful.

Another call came in to our home at 12:30 am. A dear friend shared that he was on the way to the hospital with his wife. She was actively in labor, and contractions were just a few minutes apart. And so we wait...so thankful that a day that had begun with the possibility of a loss of life, ends with the expectation of the birth of a new one. Again,we are so thankful.

So I will continue to embrace the contrast...brilliantly described in one of my most favorite films, "Parenthood". Gil, played by Steve Martin, complains about the complication and difficult 'ups & downs' of life. Wherein Grandma wanders in and says:

You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster. Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride! I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn't like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.

Belle's Prayers

I have a bad memory, and last night I was reminded of the importance of keeping my blog by a funny thing Belle said at prayertime before bed.

First, I should say that Belle's prayers these last several months have followed a very predictable trend as to their theme. The theme often is receiving wisdom, but it is also paired with "but only if you want to, God". Lots of her prayers involve--either at the beginning, middle or end--"but you control everything just like you want to...you don't have to do what we ask...we understand if you don't answer how we like...just do what you think is best." I'd like to say that this theme is present in how we pray with the girls...but, um, honestly...I don' t think so. That's just Belle's personality, and we delight in seeing how He made her to interact with Him.

So, anyway, this is what happened last night. My husband had just finished praying over Belle, and said "amen". Belle then said, "Wait Daddy, I have something to pray about. Lord, we love you and we just pray for wisdom. Give us wisdom Lord...and good tempers. May we be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger and slow to think." There was more to her sweet prayer, but I checked out mentally trying to memorize that first part so as to enter it as a blog post this morning.

So often we are blown away by the depth of her prayers...right before it takes a turn, and then we get the giggles. :)

Repairing Mongolia

This is a family from a neighboring town that we started supporting a little over a year ago. I was pleasantly surprised to find this YouTube video on Facebook today that gives a little glimpse of their life in Mongolia.

Because it Has to be Done.

My dearest friend is moving to Africa. Sigh.

For how long, no one really knows...but probably just shy of a dozen years. She will be back on furlough with her family every three years. This is not a surprise. In fact, when we first became close--about 12 years ago--her heart for orphans in Africa and her desire to help them was one thing that she shared with me. As time went on, I got the real sense that this vision would indeed become reality...and it has been with great joy, with a hint of grief that I have watched the Father's plans unfold for her family.

With great admiration, I have watched her slowly and methodically say goodbye to bunches of worldly possessions, a loving church family, the comforts of all that is "predictable" and "known", many good friends, a fulfilling community life, and most heart-wrenchingly: family. I have seen through all these things the physical, real-world embodiment of the idea that "He must increase, and I must decrease".

So, how and why is someone willing to say goodbye to all this? There are, I think, at least two answers to that question (just my thoughts, not necessarily my friend's).

First, because the Father clearly called this family to this task...and a wise friend once said that there would be more fear of NOT going after such a clear call is made on one's life, than any fear of answering that call...even if the call was to give up everything and serve in a small village in Tanzania.

Second, and this is just my simple-minded view, but very simply: it has to be done. It is a supremely good work--in Hebrew: a mitzvah--that should be done, particularly by God's people. It is one more step toward 'repairing the world'--tikkun olam--that should be a distinctive of God's people. This concept of 'tikkun olam', carries with it the idea that the world is profoundly broken and can be fixed only by human activity...with the Father's help.

So I hold and balance two conflicting feelings in each hand. As my heart aches and breaks for the impending loss of the physical closeness of my friend, still I am overjoyed that she is going to repair a little piece of the world so far from here. We are so close that I feel a part of me gets to go there with her. I am also challenged to ask lots of questions of myself and my Heavenly Father, a few of them being "Am I willing to give all this up? Would you increase, and help me to decrease? What would you have me do...and where...and how?"

What if we as believers all asked...begged...even pleaded, "What would you have me do?"

May we have ears to hear.