angel encounter at wendy's

one day last week we met matt at wendy's for lunch. there was nothing in the house to eat and i was too unorganized and tired to go to the store. it had been a rough morning, and i was in a really bad mood. it was one of those days of feeling like my kids would be better off if i was not their mom.

toward the end of our meal, i looked up and there was this sweet older woman standing over our table, who began in a very soothing voice, "do you know how blessed you are to have this family..." and then proceeded to look each of us in the eyes with compliments and encouragements. i was fighting back the tears, because it was SO what i needed right then. and it came from a total stranger.... or was it?

me & music

when i hear good music, something comes alive inside me. i am amazed at how a certain song can come on and, either because of profoundly relevant lyrics or even just really well-done music, it can just instantly crack me open.

i am adding a music feature to my sidebar. sometimes it may be an album or sometimes just one or two songs that i am enoying or that have blessed me in some way. i don't personally own nearly all of my favorite stuff, so sometimes it will just be a song i've heard somewhere or snippets i have heard online.

great family flick

earlier this year i read the book Because of Winn-Dixie to Miriam, and this past week we watched the movie. it is sweet and innocent for kids, and still entertaining for adults, with a good message, too. i was also pleasantly surprised to see (and hear) in it one of my favorite musicians, Dave Matthews. i would recommend it!

charlotte mason

as you can probably tell by my last post, i really get into charlotte mason's philosophy of education. it resonates with my interests and style (and ours as a family). and though i doubt the way we teach our kids will fit perfectly into her methods and ideas, overall i think they will impact much of what we do. one writer on the web gave what i thought was a nice synopsis of what was important to mason in regards to educating children here.

you can also find/read charlotte mason's entire original homeschooling series online here. i still have much learning and reading to do!

book lists

book lists have become one of my favorite things. our kids love books and love being read to, which is a great thing considering that is one of the main things we want to do as a homeschooling family. as a result, my (and my husband's!) love for books has been growing, as well. i am so appreciative of those who have gone before and have put together some great lists of classic, quality books to read to/with our kids. those that i have referred to most often are found within the following books and websites (there's a lot of overlap between them):

• Honey for a Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt
• Books Children Love by Elizabeth Wilson
• Educating the WholeHearted Child by Clay & Sally Clarkson
• Ambleside Online
• Simply Charlotte Mason
• A Charlotte Mason Education

i thought it might be fun to post in my sidebar some favorites that we come across as we go.... maybe it will give you some good ideas, too!

christians & climate

i challenge you to read and think about how you could respond to this Statement of the Evangelical Climate Initiative. and, if you feel so inclined, spread the word within your own sphere of influence.

thoughts on worship

matt and i are both reading Blue Like Jazz right now and loving it. the subtitle of the book is "nonreligious thoughts on christian spirituality". i would also describe it as being "refreshingly raw".

last night on our drive to Chicago (we made it this time!) i read some pretty sweet stuff in his chapter on worship that i just thought i'd share:

It comforts me to think that if we are created beings, the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality, and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality, that it would contradict reason. But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality, or it would not be reasonable... (p201)

Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me... (p202)

he goes on to recount going up Mount Tabor, overlooking Portland, many times throughout the summer to watch the sunset, and makes this observation concerning the beauty he would see there night after night...

I thought to myself, This is something that happens all the time... All the beauty happens right above the heads of more than a million people who never notice it.

Here is what I've started thinking: All the wonder of God happens right above our arithmetic and formula. The more I climb outside my pat answers, the more invigorating the view, the more my heart enters into worship. (p203)

pet pelican

my "date" post from last week got me thinking that it might be fun to share memories once in a while from our time in australia. then, the kids' magazine that i posted the "butterfly boots" picture from also included an article on pelicans, which reminded me of this friendly fellow that used to visit our back door regularly while we lived "down unda".

there was also a small river that ran through our backyard at this apartment ("flat"), which flowed directly from the pacific ocean. (we lived minutes from the coast.) one day, we could barely believe our eyes as we saw the backs of dolphins swimming past!!

i must stop now... all this reminiscing is making me a little bit sad. michigan is a nice place to live, to be sure, but not quite that cool. :) all i need to do, though, is turn my thoughts to the gigantic cockroaches we encountered on a regular basis, and i like michigan a whole lot more!

life happens

i think something might be wrong with me. maybe i should go get checked out...

last night, my blood pressure remained strangely normal, my breathing unusually relaxed, and my voice surprisingly calm as we slowly coasted to a stop in the middle of 16th street. our van was loaded up with our children and luggage as we embarked on our journey to chicago for the weekend... at least that was the plan until the van decided it wasn't goin' nowhere. oh, and did i mention that just that afternoon we had picked it up from the fix-it place and allowed the fix-it people to charge an unspeakable amount of money to our account to fix this very problem! it appeared we had just spent a heck of a lot of money and an entire day of packing for nothing.

but, like i said, somehow i remained rather unphased and even pleasant throughout the entire ordeal. (believe me, my husband will confirm that this is highly un-normal!) i guess i am finally starting to learn that life gives what it will, and we can either be miserable about it (and make everyone around us miserable in the process), or we can make the best of it. maybe a lesson in learning to handle disappointment was what we needed more than a weekend away.

a very cozy car ride in my dear sister's "race car" (as levi likes to call it), a phone call to grandma & grandpa instead, and a few roasted marshmallows in the backyard with the neighbors... and it wasn't such a bad night after all.

Our kids' June issue of "Your Big Backyard" magazine arrived in the mail yesterday, and when I opened it up to this picture, I instantly knew I had to share it on my blog! Isn't it great?? This magazine is put out by the National Wildlife Federation, and has a sibling for the older child called "Ranger Rick" as well as one for the younger child called "Wild Animal Baby". Our kids love them.

Check out their website, too, at www.nwf.org.

date

another one of my things: i love writing the date "backwards"... though it really isn't backwards at all (we americans just think it is). we grew accustomed to this while in australia, as this is how they write it there. something as simple as writing the date can bring me back to our time there. little things like that i miss sometimes. perhaps i shall reminisce more in coming posts...