Catching Up

March 29, 2012

Catching Up

My, this blog is sorely neglected lately!

I have a million thoughts in a day to share and always good intentions to do so, and then of course real life ends up taking precedence.

Let's see, I thought I'd post about grammar a while back to tell you how I was caught completely off guard with Visual Latin in lesson 2A "Grammar Review" with predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives. My Classical Ed friends tried to help me, but I allowed myself to get lost in that dauntingly complex obscurity for some time. Once I figured it out, I saw how simple it was, but oh that ostentatious terminology! While I do like the program, expect to learn these lessons yourself before teaching them if, like me, you know nothing about grammar!

I also thought I'd write a post on how inspiring it has been for me to read Abigail Adams. I wonder if this book isn't directly for us mothers, and at the same time it is so essential for our daughters to meet and know this woman, not even for the sake of patriotism, but for knowing the true mettle of a woman loyal to God, her husband, and her people. For who knows what our daughters may someday be called to.

One day Johnny came into the house to find his mother and his uncle Elihu, dressed in his minuteman uniform, a hunting shirt with a musket slung on his back. The two were in the kitchen, putting all his mother's treasured pewter spoons into a large kettle. As Johnny watched his mother calmly directing the activity in her quiet voice, he slowly began to understand that they were melting down her precious pewter to make bullets. As his eyes met hers across the room, he felt a surge of love and pride.

"Do you wonder," said John Quincy Adams sixty-eight years later, "that a boy of seven who witnessed this scene should be a patriot?"

You will want to see the note here on this book before reading it with your girls. I skipped over it myself thinking *maybe* at thirteen, not at ten.

I also have a backlog of nature pictures. Here are a few for now in all jumbled up order:

How my kids 'cook'

Our praying mantis egg sac hatching

dandelion seeds - I am always amazed at how spectacular the 'same old thing' can be when you really look at it.

this was Arica's daughter's birthday party at the beach - I took the picture from inside a small cave and the yellow sprouty flower you see is mustard, which is blooming all over the hills here announcing spring.

A flower press Isabella brought to nature study today.

a tick - there were so many of these all over the grass at Laguna Coast, at one point we saw three ticks lined up on one stalk of grass! Suprisingly, our kids ran through the grass several times and none of them got a tick. I think God created these to remind us we are not in heaven.

monkey flower - Isabella showed me today how touching the open stigma on these causes it to close!

California rose

another picture of our praying mantis egg sac hatching - they would hatch in a casing and have to squiggle out of it. One got stuck and never made it out of the casing :(