Rideau Trail
Right now, Mr. 20 is taking his three younger sisters out for Chinese food. The girls, especially Miss 15, are thrilled, and so am I. It is such a joy when siblings love and enjoy each other!
Earlier in the week some of us were suffering from headaches, sore throats, and dizziness, but with good food, garlic, sleep, and vitamins we are doing quite well. Miss 17’s joke collection helped, as did the cooler weather. Now the air conditioning is off, the windows are open, and bird songs float into the house along with the sunshine.
Our dear bunny is getting tamer and tamer, but she’s nibbling more and more—shoes, cords, cushions…. That is a problem, and she is spending more time in her outside hutch.
This spring we fenced our yard for our dogs. Today one of them crawled underneath the gate, remembering the trick Miss 12 had taught him before we put the fence up. That, too, is a problem, and he’s spending time in the dog kennel.
We found a rack of very inexpensive colorful jeans and bought some to turn into shorts. Miss 12 and Miss 15 did the sewing themselves and the shorts are beautiful, modest, and a whole lot cheaper than anything readymade.
We’re hurrying to get the weeds out of the unplanted part of the garden before they go to seed. It’s a big job, but the raspberries, plums, cherry plums, salads, and apples are a good reward.
In other news: Miss 17 had some real job interviews, and Miss 12 had one, too, at a horse farm. Our phone line is broken, my husband went swimming with his cell phone, and our internet has become flakey, all modern inconveniences. On his day off, Mr. 20 put up some drywall in the basement, and if Miss 17’s interviews were not successful, we hope to do some painting next week.
We walked the next section of the Rideau Trail (Map 13, from Merrickville to Richardson Road). Despite the bugs it was a joy to trek through the woods, listening to a beautiful bird we could not identify, watching butterflies, and dodging poison ivy and thorny branches.
Long ago, before I got ill, I bought fabric to decorate our bedroom, and lately I’ve been sewing in any spare time I have. The curtains are finally finished, the bed skirt is half-finished, and the bedspread is next week’s project. It’s good to have energy and opportunity to sew again.
How is my desk cleaning project going? Well, I’ve added to the mess: lots of notes, Rideau Trail maps, The Drop Box DVD, an Adventures in Odyssey episode based on The Drop Box, Focus on the Family’s Club House magazine, homeschooling catalogues, Daugherty’s Magna Charta, The Secret of Willow Castle, a wedding invitation…. Life is just too busy to get my desk organized, but it would be so much more pleasant if the job ever got done. Maybe next week.
But we do find time to read, especially while waiting for appointments or when exhausted. I finished Redeeming Philosophy, my big read for the year, and hope to have a review up early next week. It is a worthwhile book for families that homeschool classically and keep on encountering different philosophies, but it is also very intense and I was so excited to have completed it. I also finished Scrum, The Secret of Willow Castle (Canadian history novel for kids), and Mysteries of Time and Creation (which I plan to review on The Curriculum Choice next month), and for fun I’ve been sharing The Happiness of Pursuit with Miss 15. We giggle a lot and think a bit, too.
Books to be finished and/or reviewed: Disciplines of a Godly Woman, 101 Top Picks (but not until I’ve finished thinking through the educational implications of Scrum); Sex Matters; Minds More Awake; Taking God at His Word; God Did Say.
I finished reading Daugherty’s Magna Charta out loud to the girls and just started Anne de Vries’s Journey Through the Night, about World War 2 in the Netherlands. They groaned when I began, but Miss 12 was excited by the second paragraph and it didn’t take Miss 15 much longer.
Finally, even though my comment form no longer works, sometimes people go to the effort to contact me in other ways. This week I received two wonderfully encouraging emails that brought tears to my eyes and drove me to the organ to play Psalms. It had been a very difficult decision to publish ‘What God Has Done for Me,’ but perhaps it was necessary. Perhaps one of the reasons that we have suffered so much and that the nuthatch died was to remind us all to run to God when unbearable times and unanswerable questions come into our lives. Dear reader, always run to him and never away from him!
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How is your summer going? If you wish to comment, please comment here since my blog comment form is still not working.
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This post is linked to Kris’s Weekly Wrap Up , Week in Review, and Finishing Strong.