Weekly Wrap Up: Rain, Rabies, and Learning

• 
• Tweet
• Sumo

• 
• Tweet

Here you need to imagine a picture of the beautiful orange-edged yellow roses my husband got me yesterday.  Unfortunately, I could not get the picture onto the computer.

In our lives this week…

This week was almost the opposite of last week.  Because of rain and cold weather, we did hardly any gardening or swimming.  The girls concentrated on their schoolwork, and we spent time with other people almost every day.  In fact, I cannot recall a week where I did so much listening, and it was good. My husband and I also spent some invigorating hours discussing all sorts of topics with other Christians.

We also went to IKEA (the kids loved the breakfast and the yoghurt cones), polished some of our antique Dutch furniture, and split and stacked many cords of wood.

We have been having issues with rodents.  Due to a recent law, effective poisons are no longer available in Ontario, and we are using traps instead. This week Miss 11 was bitten by a rat that had been trapped but not killed, and now she is suffering through rabies shots.

In our homeschool …

Miss 11 is still working on her math.  A friend suggested that she should calculate how much she needed to do each day to be caught up in a year.  “That’s what math is for, you know.  To help you solve your problems.”  Miss 11 did the calculations and has decided she needs to work 90 minutes a day to reach that goal, so we increased her daily math time.  But this afternoon, since we did not let her help with the wood after the next rabies shot, she worked many hours on her metric measurements book.

Miss 14 has successfully completed several chapters of Physical Science this week.  She has also read many more Eric Walters books and one of them, Shaken, is not suitable for teens.  I had suspected as much and put it aside, but she read it anyhow.  I will review Shaken next week and probably post more about it in the future.

Miss 16 has completed her chemistry experiments and now only needs to finish her science reading.  She’s working through The Disappearing Spoon, once recommended by Barb.  She has also almost finished last year’s math and is busy putting together the bibliography for one of her essays on Dante, based on Omnibus V.  She has also been volunteering with a local politician and has found a yard-care job that begins next week.

In our gluten free kitchen… Porridge.  Corn pancakes.  Corn bread.  Quinoa.  Potato salad.  Eggs, scrambled with onions, sausage bits, and green peppers.  Cherries.  Fresh raspberries.  Lots of chicken.  Sausages.  Chard, beets, lettuce, carrots, broccoli, rhubarb, and herbs from the garden.  Soup.  Lay’s chips. Bacon.  Gazpacho.  Rhubarb sauce.  Club soda and fizzy orange juice.

In our gardens and yard…

We have had so much rain that the girls did not work in the garden at all, and I only weeded one flower garden.  I’m thankful that we finished most of the weeding last week.

A tree fell down, so the men of the family dealt with that.  They also rented a wood splitter to finish up the log pile on our driveway.  It has been slowly shrinking since late winter, but there was an enormous amount of work to do, and everyone except me pitched in.

Some of my favorite things were…

• Chatting with friends.
• Watching my girls’ success at learning.
• Eating cherries.

Questions/thoughts I have…  Life is full of difficult questions.  Sometimes reading is a great escape; sometimes, as in the case of Shaken which my teen read before I did, reading only adds to the questions.

Fitness… I managed almost 10,000 steps most days.  Between the rain and the time with friends, it was not easy to get those steps.  I also started the RCAF XBX program.  It begins very slowly for people my age and, except for the aerobics, is easy for me to do.  I’m replacing the aerobics with my 10,000 steps. Also, I ate well, lost my kilogram for the month, and don’t feel too tired though I was stressed and had difficulty staying asleep.

One of my favorite solutions for stress is to read health books.  Usually I get some good ideas, but for the first time in decades, I read one (Hormone Cure)that told me I was super-healthy!   That sure put a spring in my step.

Some of the things I’ve been working on…

• Summer schooling, planning for next year, and wrapping up last year.
• Pondering my history of science reading for the next year.
• Planning Canadian history for next year.
• Trying to balance my activities and goals for the summer and fall to accomplish what needs doing without becoming tired or stressed.
• Pondering some of life’s big questions, partly in relation to Total Truth and Shaken, partly in relation to things people have talked about lately. Since I plan to go through Shaken with Miss 14, I will probably soon write about this.

I’m reading… Romans.   I read the Wahls Protocol, Hormone Cure, and Shaken.  I’m also still reading Mendeleyev’s Dream, The Slight Edge, Pascal’s Pensees, A Man Called Intrepid ,52 Weeks of Family French, and The Meaning of Marriage.

Reading Aloud… We’re continuing with Ezekiel.

When my husband is home for meals, we read Isaiah.

I’m grateful for ….  Rain for the garden.  Sunshine.  Books.

Quote or link to share…. From Proverbs 3:  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.  In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths.”

—

This post is linked to Kris’s Weekly Wrap Up .