A Week, Briefly (3/12/18)

Starting at the end of last week, this week became a week of incredible mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual work.

And it is not over.

How interesting is it that as the week began I was finishing up Deuteronomy and reading how Moses told Joshua to "Be strong and of good courage" several times.  Then I began Joshua and found that the Lord himself repeated the same advice several more times.  Then I read two different bloggers who wrote on the theme of courage.

It has been good advice for me.

I have wanted repeatedly to give up.  The work has been actually too hard--too fraught with fear, hurt, collateral damage, and ignorance.

But I have not.

And I have received encouragement along the way.

In the mean time, the kids' delightful aunt and uncle in California gave us their unused Nikon camera.  It is a VERY NICE camera.  It was kind of for Pixie because she's such a beautiful photographer, but she's dancing so much that picture-taking is on hold for her most of the time.  Instead, it has gone to my other photographer, Little Princess.

And she captured some of the beauty of the week . . . beauty that would have otherwise been lost to me . . .

(photographer's selfie)

Please ignore the unkempt hair (she was between styles that day) and see the beautiful light instead.

How blessed I am!

Sir Walter Scott began school this week.  It was supposed to start in May, but an opening popped up for a class with no pre-reqs, and we figured, "In for a penny, in for a pound!" and he took it. 

If all goes well, graduation will be in 2021.

The first week has gone well.

Nature Angel really and truly finished her math book for the year.  She's so glad to be done!

And we started co-op!  It's our first co-op in at least 6 years.  Nature Angel is taking an art class; Little Princess is taking a just-for-fun story/craft/cupcake decorating "class;" and the rest of us hang out in the nursery for an hour.  The we go home.

1 hour.

That's all I signed up for.

It is plenty for now, but I can feel that it will become more in future sessions, and that's okay, because it is time for this to happen.

Nature Angel's class is called "Painting with Pencils."  That's just what they do.  Draw and paint with actual pencils.

We're finishing up our first chapter of Nature Anatomy in Academy, and we made a wall mural about field succession.

Beowulf's part was drawing the grass and weeds.  How he loves to look at his dandelions!

Mister Man is particularly enamored of reading it and marveling over how long it takes (approx 150 years) for an abandoned field to turn into established forest.

The teens and I watched Chariots of Fire for Movies as Literature, and I reviewed their essays about Henry V with them.  In their individual ways, they are all 3 growing as essayists.

Pixie has hit a hard place in her mathematics.  We've already decided that Saxon Algebra 2 (which includes significant geometry and trig) is her final advanced math class.  From here on out it will be personal finance and business math for her, but she still has a lot of lessons to go, and though she is a good student--quite capable--it is simply hard work.

Good thing she's a hard worker!

Belle and Super Star are counting units left in science books, lessons left in math books, and pages left in literature journals.  They're feeling freedom in the sometimes springtime air.

And they continue their whirlwind social lives; on Saturday alone they had to choose between 2 dances and a birthday party.  They attended the birthday party because supporting friends trumps generic social opportunities . . . but it was HARD to choose!

Pepper--a 6-moth-old female lop--joined our family.

She's Nature Angel's.

She lives upstairs in Nature Angel's room . . .JoyJoy (the cat) lives outside . . . and Theo lives waaay downstairs with Belle.

So far, so good.

I've got instructions from Sir Walter Scott to go ahead and purchase chicks this week.  He says having them peeping and growing in a big box in the basement kitchen will give him incentive to really, really work on finishing the coop by the time they're ready to be moved outside.

Whew!

We're becoming a regular zoo around here!

Rose Red is officially 18 years old.

New guidelines for keeping the privilege of living at home have been drawn up.  There has already been some testing of the rules, but mostly she's rising to the challenge.  I am hopeful--hopeful and wary simultaneously--that the new boundaries will be good for her and that she will grow into them.



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