“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.”
- Abraham Lincoln

This morning the boys and I walked down the street to the local elementary school to cast our vote. Well, to cast my vote.

All the chilly way was filled with talk of  ”why?”

Why vote?

Why read up on all the candidates, scribble notes and weigh rhetoric against track record?

Why when it sometimes seems like….

well….

Where are the Thomas Jeffersons? The Benjamin Franklins? The Abraham Lincolns?

Are any of the people on this ballot made of what it takes to fix this mess? Will any of them go down in history as the leaders who restored this nation? Will any of them inspire, work towards, fight for a REAL recovery, one that goes beyond economics?

I don’t know.

“My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!”

- Thomas Jefferson

But we vote.

Not just because it buys us the right to complain if we don’t like the way things are going.

Not even just because we pay our taxes and so deserve to be heard.

We vote.

Hope yours was just the right mix of scary and sweet!

I hadn’t planned on doing the whole pumpkin patch/ pumpkin carving thing this year. I just could not see adding another thing to our plate.

At the last minute though, my littlest ranch hand looked ever so longingly at the pumpkins in the grocery store… all of which were moldy and ick by the week of Halloween.

He gave me a piteous, “Is it fun to play in a pumpkin patch and carve a jack-o-lantern? I don’t remember.”

And so, well and truly guilted, off to the patch we went… attired in uniforms… fresh from a scout meeting, because it seems that right now life is all about multi-tasking, cramming and smooshing and grabbing what we can where we can.

I’m so glad we did.

It was just a little patch, but there were memories to be unearthed there.

Golden fall light.

Pumpkins in surprising shapes and colors and sizes.

Giggles and jokes and picking them up just to see if you could.

Sometimes you just have to scrap the plans and seize the day.

I thought that I WOULD make costumes, but there just wasn’t time (are you seeing a trend?). Frankly though, the boys got the biggest kick out of going to the store and picking out a costume to… BUY.

What wonders!

What joy!

We have always enjoyed putting together costumes from our imaginations, the dress up box and the great biggo pile of fabric and notions, but this was a refreshing change.

Imagine! No going to to bed the night before, listening to the distant whir of the sewing machine, and hoping against hope that mama will finish!

It was good.

We’re good.

… good and full of candy!

And memories.

What sweeter treat could there be?

Hi friends!

I’m seeing that there’s just no easy way to gracefully catch up and tell you all that we’ve been up to in our absence from blogville. Every time I sit down to do it I get overwhelmed and decide to curl up in bed with a book instead.

So…. how about I just jump in and tell you what we’ve been reading over these last few months?

My middle son James read The Magnificent 12 – The Call and gave it two eager thumbs up. He can’t wait for the next installment.

From the publisher: “Twelve-year-old Mack MacAvoy suffers from a serious case of mediumness. Medium looks. Medium grades. Medium parents who barely notice him. With a list of phobias that could make anyone crazy, Mack never would have guessed that he is destined for a more-than-medium life. Until one day…”

This is the first book in what will be a series of…. 12? It’s witty, wry and fresh. I WILL warn you that the story starts out with an awful lot of talk of bullies and swirlies and a teacher that likes to sneak out for a smoke… in other words, some topics and humor that are just a tad bit mature for my boys, but considering the abysmal gross-em-out-and-shock-em literature offerings for boys today, I’d say that it was all very mild and in fact rather thought provoking and smart.

What boy doesn’t dream of a strange creature showing up in the public restroom to tell him that he’s really a hero, bound for amazing adventures?

Owing to a recommendation from my friend Hannah, my oldest has been completely lost in the Ga’Hoole series for months now. Essentially, it these books chronicle the journey of a band of young owls as they fight against the evil forces that threaten to end life as they know it.

We read the first together, and he was hooked. He hasn’t shown much interest in seeing the movie. It got sort of “eh” reviews and he doesn’t want to “watch anything that might spoilt he books” for him. Love that.

I had never even heard of this Beverly Cleary book, but given that all three of my boys are die hard Ramona and Henry fans, I thought that Mitch and Amy might be just the thing to listen to (audiobook) on the way to Granny’s house a few weeks back.

We all loved it. I never cease to be amazed by Ms. Cleary’s ability to see straight into the heart of childhood. This, as with all her stories, is just a simple look at the ordinary lives of a brother and sister, but each of us, from the 36 year old mama to the 5 year old boy found ourselves identifying with and rooting for Mitch and Amy. Delightful.

And BTW, we DID see Ramona and Beezus this summer and loved it. Loved. It!

We read The Well of Sacrifice aloud as part of our history studies. It’s a little scary, suspenseful and more than once whatever else we had planned for the day got pushed aside so that we could read “just a little bit more!”

Okay, where have I been? I didn’t even know until recently that 101 Dalmations was a BOOK before it was a movie. Did you know that? The boys and I read it aloud and were completely smitten. It’s really such a smart endearing tale. As cute as the movie is, the book is far and away better.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was one of my all time favorite books as a girl, so when I saw The Best Halloween Ever at the grocery store, I was thrilled. We read it aloud this week, and while it was not quite as tears-through-laughter enchanting as the first, it was fun to return to the Herdmans. This book is short, funny and was a great lunch time read aloud for the week before the big night.

Are you noticing a trend?

Yes, most of my reading lately has been beneath my grade level

Hello, I’m 36, and I read at a 4th grade level.

I DO have two grown up books on my nightstand though. I’ve actually even read a few intriguing chapters of 1000 White Women.

What about you? What have you been reading lately?

Hello there. Is anyone still poking around these parts?

It has been silent here, I know, but don’t let that fool you. There has been much life at the ranch, so so much. In fact it is, at least in part, the overabundance of life that has kept me quiet here.

Silence is the fabric upon which the notes are woven. ~Lawrence Duncan

Our learning endeavors have gotten rather demanding and consuming.

The remodeling saga wages on.

There’s been a little traveling, and we’ve added several new adventures to our list of weekly commitments.

We are happy. We are good. We are in the midst of a glorious fall – all the hell heat of  Texas summer behind us-  and an exciting path is laid out before us. It has taken all of me, ALL OF ME,  though to learn to juggle everything on our plates and still maintain our family’s sense of peace and continuity – to preserve a little space – a little margin – in our very full lives.

I didn’t mean to leave you hanging though. I’m really very sorry for that. Truth be told,  I didn’t mean to be away at all, actually. It’s a funny thing … how easy it gets to stay gone once you’ve taken leave. I didn’t expect that.

It has felt a bit like freedom though… to leave the camera at home, to keep my thoughts my own and our days a family matter. It has felt good, in some ways, to be quiet, to float, to steer clear of the sometimes overwhelming, awe-inspiring, world of blogging.

I’ll confess to you that so often those windows into the lives of others leave me feeling… like an under achiever, jealous, less – less talented, less worthy, less interesting. It has been good for me to step away from that and just be, just know . It has been good, yes, and also so necessary for me  in what has turned out to be a time of change and upheaval for our little family.

Still, I miss the meditation of blogging. I miss ending the day by reflecting on the best bits of it, savoring the images and moments that I want to hold on to. I’ve done a lot of looking back at old posts lately, as I’ve tried to decide what the future holds for this space, and I must say that am so grateful for them. What a tremendous joy it is to get to relive, if only for a moment, the best parts of days gone by. I don’t think I can give that up entirely.

I miss the sharing too…. hearing from you, trading ideas, comforting in the hard times and celebrating with each other in the good times. In the sometimes isolating world of mothering you have been a valued friend to me.

Thank you for that, truly. And thank you for the well wishes in my absence. Thank you for your tireless patience with silly, flighty me.

And so I am here…. here to say, “hello, friend. How have you been?”

I can’t promise that I’ll be here daily, but I do hope to be here more regularly. It’s important to me, and I really do hope that you’ll join me from time to time.

Until next week then, be well and soak in this glorious, golden, fall weather. We’ll see you soon!

It was a good plan. It was a simple, doable, good plan.

Step 1:  Clean, organize and paint the boys’ bedrooms while they were away at camp.

Step 2: Finish outlining our homeschooling plans for the year.

Step 3: On July 5^th, walk together, hand in hand, into a new year of learning.

Right.

“Everyone has plans… until they get hit.”

-Mike Tyson

Around the time the ink was drying on my freshly made plans, my husband, dear man, picked up a hammer and smashed them to pieces…

I’m blogging over at Simple Homeschool today. Click here to read the rest of the story!

So, um…..

Hi!

How’s things? I brought you a flower. It’s a coneflower. It’s special because it’s my signature flower. It’s hardy, resilient, old fashioned. It’s does its best work under pressure and while it seems a little rough around the edges it can actually be quite soothing and helpful when you’re in need. Do you like it? I grew it myself.

Yeah, um…. so, you know how when you haven’t talked to someone in a really long time, you think about calling her up, but you know that you will have so much to say, and right now you really need to round up the kids and get to piano lessons, so maybe you’ll call after, but then you have to make dinner so maybe you’ll call after that, but then there’s dishes and bath time and “mama will you read to me?” and then it’s just too late, so maybe tomorrow, but then tomorrow comes and you wake up late so you’re behind all day and then…  you look up and it’s been weeks and weeks and then you don’t call because you know you’ll never have time to properly catch up and so you kind of drift apart but you think about her lots and wonder how she is and so finally you just email and say, “Hey, I just wanted to tell you I was thinking of you,” but you wish it was more, because she’s your friend and you love her and you’d like to tell her all your stories and you’d like to hear all of her stories, but right now you’re doing your very best to just keep swimming, so you just think, “some day soon I’ll call” and you hope she’s not mad, but you know she’s probably not because she’s a real friend, a good friend, and she knows how it is. She knows how YOU are.

You know?

It’s been like that.

Sorry.

I’ve missed you.

I’ve thought about you.

I hope you’re well.

Here’s the Spark Notes version, so that we can move on, and act like this long and awkward absence never happened:

1. There was a trip to Granny’s and it was fabulous. We ate from our garden and you just can’t beat that feeling.

2. Granny got to come home with us for a week, which was awesome, but it didn’t go according to plan at all. Two of my guys came down with strep while she was here, so pretty much all she got to see of “the big city” was the biggo mess we call home.

3. I sent TWO of my boys off to sleep away camp (one more than last year). While they were gone I had the silly idea that I would paint their bedrooms and surprise them with new (to them) beds. And that, friends, is when all hell broke loose.

One thing led to another and, before I knew what hit me, everything I own was in my garage coated in a layer of concrete dust. We moved in with my parents and began an all out house remodel on the scale of Extreme Home Makeovers.

Only… um… without the speedy timeline, budget, talent and expertise.

We’re back home now, but still dealing with some major chaos. We have no doors, no table, no couches, no stove top, one working bathroom.. or at least it WAS working up until yesterday at  around about the time that the Jamaican Olympian arrived.

You think I’m kidding, don’t you?

I assure you, I’m not, and the Jamaican Olympian is why I can’t stick around and talk any longer, much as I’d like to. I have to get in the shower (with a jug of water and a rag, thanks) before he wakes up. Did I mention that we have no doors?

Anyhow, I promise, I’ll tell you the rest of the story and show you pictures soon.

For now, just know that I’m here and I’ve missed you and I’m looking forward to hearing all about your summer too!

Hey y’all!

Been kinda quiet here this week, huh?

That’s because we’ve been slaves to our books. If you could peek into our windows you’d probably come away thinking we were the laziest bunch of good for nothings this side of the Mississippi. Well, all accept for Papa. He’s busy filming documentaries about bees and top secret military robots. But the rest of us have been shamelessly lazy and lost in the pages of our books.

Even the dog.

We do hereby declare it the Summer of the Flashlight Tale and we have made it our mission to seek and find all the very best, can’t put it down, stay up late and read until  your eyes forcibly shut themselves of their own accord, books.

First up, The Hunger Games and its sequel Catching Fire.

Over the weekend my sweet sister in law, Leah, told me that I had to read these books. Now, given their premise I never, EVER, would have picked them up if anyone else had said to, but I trust her opinion implicitly.  I’m hoping that you’ll afford me the same trust.  I know, they really do sound… well… odd, to say the very least. They are so far outside of  my normal book fare.

Basically they are about a government, some time in the future, who keeps its thumb on its citizens by holding a blood chilling annual reality show. Two children (12-18 years old), a boy and a girl, are chosen  from each of the 12 districts. Then they are forced to play in this sort of Survivor-like game. Only you don’t get voted off, you get killed.

I will tell you this : the story is insanely compelling. I got the first book, The Hunger Games, on Sunday evening. I started reading and could. not. stop. I kept promising myself that I’d read, “just one more chapter.” Then I looked up and can you guess what time it was? 3:30.

AM!

And I still kept reading for another half hour!

I told my sister in law, and do you know what that crazy lady did? She brought me a frozen coffee concoction and the second book, Catching Fire.

I love her. I really really do. She makes killer desserts too, but that’s another story.

I tried to control myself. I tried to put off reading Catching Fire until the kids had gone to bed, but I only lasted about an hour. Just like before,  I just couldn’t put it down. She brought it yesterday afternoon and I’ve already finished it.  Now I’m just biding my time, chewing my fingernails and waiting anxiously for August, when book three comes out.

You have to read them. You just do.

A couple of things:

These books are meant for about age 12 and up. So, even given the basic plot, it’s not really as gory as you might imagine. One reviewer described it so well saying, “…rather than being repellent, the violence is strangely hypnotic. It’s fairy-tale violence, Brothers Grimm violence–not a cheap thrill but a symbol of something deeper”

That’s kind of what makes this tale so interesting. No one wants to kill exactly. They just want to stay alive. Its an impossible situation which is probably why it sucks you in. You just keep wondering how, how on earth can this be resolved?

It’s also, in some ways, a love story, but it’s not at all the normal gooey, shallow teen love affair. It’s all very chaste and more about the implications of love than act of it.

It’s set in the future but it’s not futuristic in a Star Wars sense. While I guess technically it is “Sci Fi,” the label seems too limiting.

So, grab the books and your flashlight. Turn your ringer off and block out a couple of days. You’ll thank me. I know it.

Maybe it’s because the beach is such a completely different landscape from the one we call home. Maybe it’s the legendary lure of the sea. Whatever the reason, some of our greatest learning adventures have happened with sand in between our toes and salty wind in our hair.

For those of you looking forward to some oceanside days this summer, we’d like to share our favorite ways to make your beach blanket the best classroom ever.

Read the rest of this post over at Simple Homeschool….

Hey y’all!

The mercury is rising at an alarming rate around here and I’m determined to put on my Steel Magnolia face.  I will greet the season with determined grace. I will not give in to whining about the heat. I will not.

Well… not right away anyhow.

Phase one of my “beat the heat” plan is to pull out all the many many games that we own.  I’m going to retrieve them from their varying cubby holes and find a good accessible way to store them all together. That way, when we’re huddled under the air conditioning vent together we’ll have something with which to pass the (5 long months of) summer.

While I’m at it, I thought that from time to time I’d share some of our favorite games here.

First up… checkers. We got our big oversized rug board at the Cracker Barrel. You can also find it online here.

I know. I know. Everyone knows about checkers. But did you know how many fun variations there are? I didn’t. Turns out, there’s at least 24 Games You Can Play on A Checkerboard.

I think our favorite is Giveaway Checkers, which is the exact opposite of regular checkers. The goal is be the first to lose all your pieces.  We’ve had a lot of  fun learning the different games that we can play with just one board, and considering the giant pile of games that are adding up to a major storage dilemma around here, a board that can multitask is well appreciated.

Some of my favorite summertime memories were lazy days spent across a game board from my great grandma. So I think if we throw in some popsicles and some summer of 69 music from Pandora, we just might have ourselves a summer to remember.

Thank you all, sincerely, for the well wishes. I am, ever so very dang slowly, recovering I think. Maybe. Kind of.

Anyhoooooooo…..

I thought you  might like to hear the final chapter in our Eastern Screech Owl story. Last week I was walking the path from our house to Daddy’s office out back. It was dark, probably 10:30 or so, and I heard this funny little chittering sound in the trees. It’s the sound I’ve come to recognize as hungry baby owls demanding food or fussing at each other for a look out the nest hole.

This sound though, it wasn’t coming from the direction of the nest.

I ran inside for the binoculars and flashlight, and soon found them, high up in a tree fighting over some feathered snack. Two little grey fluff balls, out on a branch for all the night to witness, like it wasn’t anything at all. Mom and Dad owl were nearby, and one poor fella was still in the nest, chittering and bellowing to his siblings. How clearly he wanted to take up his part in the fray!

I scanned the trees all the next day for the babies, but found only the parents. Then that night, all three of the babies were in a new tree, noisily greeting this new expanded existence. It had just gotten dark, so the boys were still awake and got to come out to see the babies. We were all so proud, watching them bob along the branches. We felt like we could take just a little bit of credit for there being three brand new owls in the world.

Then, just like that, the next day they were gone. Vanished. All of them, even the parents. We haven’t seen them again since.

That same day, one of our caterpillars (one of seven that we’ve been feeding and cleaning up after for days now) hung from his branch and formed his chrysalis. His brothers and sisters are growing fat and threatening to follow him into newness.

And these boys of mine? They are doing their part to push the wheel of time forward too. They woke up this morning a full day older, limbs stretching overnight. They laugh, sing, and run toward their futures at top speed, without reservation, while their Mama and Papa chase after, snapping photos and calling out, “Not so fast, dear! Not so fast.”

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If you haven’t already, you should definitely check out Molly’s sweet baby birds! The video is just magic.