More Endings

I think the worst ending of the past two weeks is the ending of a friendship that I thought was solid.  

It's a long and ridiculous story.

Pride.

Pride is a terrible thing.

So is self doubt.

Both of which I have in spades.

(We literally just finished The Screwtape Letters this week, so we've been studying pride and self-doubt!  

" . . . if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?’"

I was snubbed, not taken notice of, had an oar shoved in what I thought was my space, patronized, and shown off in front of, and I got mad.

Really mad.

I am trying very hard to repent.

I am trying very hard to forgive.

But I no longer feel safe around this person that I previously trusted with my real self.

My flawed, imperfect, real self.

I think I'm somewhat muddled up with the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the world.

I have every desire to follow Christ.

I have no desire to invite this person back into my personal space.

The struggle has paralyzed me in many ways--has affected my ability to take care of my family, affected my physical health, affected my mental health, affected my spiritual health.

But I'm really trying.

Lots of extreme spring weather.
These two ran out into the hail every chance they got.

We had some lovely endings, too!

We finished our sweet, sweet poetry book--All the Small Poems and Fourteen More by Valerie Worth.

I highly recommend this book just for the joy of word pictures.

The kids were thrilled with an ant colony they found one day.
They took dozens of pictures trying to capture the wonder of the ants at work, but nothing worked.
At least they tried.
I hope they'll try again.

We finished Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology.  I say "finished," but we skipped the final chapter about human reproduction because my kids needed a more straightforward and practical discussion of this subject, so we put our text away and are repeating our unit study on this subject from The Good and the Beautiful.  I've used the lessons in this unit study to guide my own lectures and discussions that have focused on my kids' particular knowledge gaps/questions/concerns.

Baymax covers his ears as much as he can get away with (I'm so trying to teach my kids that sex is a normal and natural part of life--a gift from God--not something to be ashamed of!).

The teens are all ears.

And questions!

Good questions!

As we are also memorizing/reviewing The Family: A Proclamation to the World, and this week happened to be the week our Come, Follow Me lessons covered the 10 Commandments, we've had a really great week of immersive study.

We have a few more lessons, so we'll be completely done with our planned Human Anatomy and Physiology study next week.

We also put our U.S. Presidents study away.  Can we recite them all in order and share pertinent facts about each one without error?

No.

But do we recognize all 47 presidents' names and their approximate terms of service?

Yes.

Do we know some pertinent facts about some of them?

Yes.

Did we accomplish our goal of being familiar enough to pique interest in further study?

Yes.

So we put our flash cards away for the year.

Watching a documentary about Mother Teresa.
Which reminds me that we finished reading her biography.

As mentioned above, the teens and I finished The Screwtape Letters.  

They didn't love it.

(I find this book so intriguing!)

But they read, they narrated, they discussed, and they wrote a final essay exploring how the tactics described in the book affect them (they chose 2 or 3 tactics each) and how they can personally counteract such falsehoods with truth.  I loved each of their essays.

My children have good hearts!

And that finishes up our planned literature list for the year.

3 Shakespeare plays--Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Otto of the Silver Hand

A Girl of the Limberlost

Education of Little Tree

A Separate Peace

Great Expectations

The Screwtape Letters

I feel good about that being a year of high school literature.

Now we've got to get our rears in gear regarding Eastern Hemisphere studies!

The kids and I are loving . . . loving . . . the novels included with Eastern Hemisphere right now!!

Listening to, but also super stimulated by, our book.
So he had to do something with his hands and body.

We're in the middle of Ali and the Golden Eagle--a completely true story of an Arabian boy in the 1970s--and Seven Daughters and Seven Sons--a fictitious story of a girl pretending to be a boy in order to save her family.

Both books are so good!

So good!!

The kids and I are laughing, screaming, predicting, questioning, collapsing, marveling, and researching constantly as we read these two stories.

It is so good together.

Thank goodness for family.