Kids and Conferences

 

Summer is moving along. 

We have kids and parents going hither and yon enjoying the bounty of others' labors and hopefully bringing a bit of beauty and worthiness to our world as well.

Phoebe drew this beautiful picture for Gabry's birthday present. The eyes... the hair.... the sheaves..... I could stare at it all day. 

Harrison and Silas have had a good bit of time together these summer days. It's been fun. They spent an afternoon at the town's Summer Palooza. Our church had a booth to give away snow cones and VBS information, and there were lots of bounce houses, one of which was a water slide.

Jacyna photography

Harrison went with Silas to a pizza/ice cream place in Bowling Green last Friday while I was gone to a conference. Harrison said it was some of the best pizza he's eaten.

Jacyna photography

The boys playing Gaga ball at the park.

Jacyna photography

Harrison at Silas' house filling up water balloons. 

Jonathan attended a preaching camp last week. He really enjoyed it. It seemed like the schedule was pretty packed with preaching classes and practice, but he loved the challenge. All the boys preached a 10 minute sermon at a church nearby during the week. Jon's can be found at the 1:02:00 mark. 

Jamie took three boys from church for the preaching camp: Jon, Kemper, and Joseph.

Elijah came over to spend some time with Harrison. They built a Lego tank together.

Our refrigerator broke. 

Thankfully, not all at once. We noticed it was feeling a bit warmer. And when we put a newly filled ice tray in the freezer and it never froze, we knew it was time. This fridge had been here when we moved in, so we were just thankful we got two years out of it. 

The Firestone in town happened to have a nice selection of refrigerators. I found the type I wanted; we decided to put in an ice maker which they installed for us. They took the old one off our hands and hooked up the new one. 

We found out our fridge was on the way out, and we had a new the very same day. Pretty amazing. Thank you, Lord!

Franke photography

The church had their picnic and pool party.

Franke photography

Thanks, Christy. Never sit by the photographer while eating.

Franke photography

Lanaya Elizabeth came to visit! She stayed with us all weekend and went to celebrate her college roommate's engagement near St. Louis. She's looking over Harrison's drawings here at the table. It was so fun to spend time with her here at home.

After she left, I got home and self ready for a trip to Atlanta for a homeschool conference. Simply Charlotte Mason has been doing a conference for about five years, and I finally felt I was close enough to drive and also had the time this year to attend. They offer their authors free registration for the event which is so generous and a blessing.

I knew I was going to travel through Nashville, so I planned to stop by North Wind Manor and spend a little time there. North Wind Manor is the Rabbit Room's community space. The Rabbit Room is a community of creatives begun by Andrew Peterson.

The community space (or 'coffee shop' is how I like to refer to it) is a restored farmhouse. I guess they couldn't keep too much of the farmhouse because of how bad a shape it was in, but they used everything they could salvage.

This is Tolkien's actual fireplace! 

Above on the mantel is a porcelain rabbit that had been owned by Richard Adams, author of Watership Down. 

Some of the books on these shelves are from Madeleine L'Engle's personal library. (Author of A Wrinkle in Time.)

This tiny volume was amongst L'Engle's books but didn't have the white bookmark in it that's supposed to indicate that it's from her library. We'll be reading this poem for school this year, so I got a picture anyway. 

There's a hidden reading nook under the stairs! 

The staff was so kind. Rachel the hospitality coordinator gave me a tour. The whole venture is non-profit, so the food and coffee and tea offered is free. Although you can give a donation online. 

It was cereal day! How fun. I wasn't hungry, but I did have a cup of the Rabbit Room tea (it was so-o good!). They allowed me to go in their book barn which is where they store and ship the books they sale. I only bought two. Chesterton's Orthodoxy and Peterson's The God of the Garden.

After 10 or 12 hours of driving, I made it to Stone Mountain, GA for the conference. This was my view from the first hotel I stayed in. Stone Mountain is this odd large rock in the middle of forests and flatness. Wikipedia says it was formed "as a result of the upwelling of magma from within the Earth's crust. This magma solidified to form granite within the crust 5 to 10 miles below the surface." 

There is a bas relief carved into the side of the mountain showing Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. There are hiking trails and a train and golfing and camping and all kinds of outdoor entertainment at Stone Mountain. 

This is my view after I was moved from the old hotel because of a power outage. My second room was super nice. :-) 

I haven't been to many homeschool conferences, and I had so much fun! We did some sample subjects that showed a Charlotte Mason way of teaching. I've been homeschooling for 16 years, and I came away with ideas and new perspective. Other people's ideas and experiences are so good for opening up my eyes and mind to something new. For thinking about things in a new light. I loved it all.

From Instagram #cmtogether2023

Contra dancing was my favorite though. It's like a mixture of square dancing and the old English country dances that you see in Pride and Prejudice and the like. There was a live band and a lady who taught us the moves and did all the calls. Just a delightful time! 

I met and talked with so many people. It was very encouraging and refreshing.

The first morning of the conference, I had already determined to walk the trails from my hotel to the conference center. It took an hour, but I knew we'd be so busy that I wouldn't get much chance to hike otherwise. I saw a little chipmunk. :-) 

I met one of the ladies from a Charlotte Mason Typing Team I'm a part of, and she invited me to have dinner with her and her friends. We went to this little hole-in-the-wall pub that had a cozy atmosphere and the most delicious pretzel and cheese dip. I took a picture of an older gentleman with his pretzel across the room. Do you see it hanging there? It was pretty large. We shared.

I got back around midnight Saturday. Dead tired. Having listened to half of Ivanhoe on the way home. So glad to see Phillip and the kids. Went to church on Sunday and then took a three hour nap that afternoon. Such a lovely time, and I'm very glad to be home. 

Doc running down the road.

Pickles the cat had been gone for about a week and then showed back up. 

Yay! We need a mouse-chaser that can handle Doc. 

The plants that we water are starting to flower. Doc had mauled our first plantings. Phillip covered the boxes with chicken wire to keep him off. We bought a few replacement plants for the dead ones and he seems to be leaving the plants alone now. This is Raspberry Coneflower.

Volunteer Marigold.

Volunteer Red Clover.

Hardy Plumbago.

There's no place like home.

4th of July

It's hot out there!

And we haven't gotten much rain. The crops are suffering. But they're not brown yet.

This is a beautiful field of winter wheat that has been harvested and the straw rolled up into gorgeous round bales. We pass it every time we go into town, and I am loving it so much. 

Phillip is working on getting a new heating/cooling system in the house. He rigged up an ingenious way to move this heavy piece of concrete.

He had to move it, then build a box to hold it all, then lay down more dirt and rock. And then move the concrete piece back on top of all that.

Doc ~ ever ready to "help out."

We took a trip to St. Louis. I wanted Jonathan to get some city and highway driving experience before he headed off to Florida in August. He did a wonderful job handling the traffic and the missed exits (Siri's a little slow on the draw when you don't know where you're going). 

We went to City Museum for our St. Louis trip. It's this huge indoor/outdoor ...... play park(?) that's fun for adults as well as kids. As a matter of fact, my young kids would not have enjoyed this (but there were plenty of young kids there!). You go through creepy tunnels and into small claustrophobic spaces to get around. The good thing is that they always give you an 'easy' way to around as well. 

Harrison and I went up into these two airplanes that have the skins taken off and the seats taken out.

When I say we went up, I mean that we were up! 

We climbed through these fenced tunnels and steep stairs to get to them.

That is not us, however.

Cockpit.

It was fun. Tiring. I was wearing the wrong shoes. But a fun trip.

A bowl of cherries. 

Phillip and Phoebe.

We've been spring cleaning, and we just finished cleaning and staining all the woodwork in the house. I love it when that job is done. The house just feels so spic and span.

Pictures to show that we bought new books for the upcoming school year and everything still fits on the shelves we have! We do not have to go to the bank (from an old movie I Remember Mama).

Some of the shelves have books behind books, but it still fits.

This is our school shelf which has been rearranged to say goodbye to Jonathan and hello to only two students this year. 

Oh my. Tears.

I picked the junior highers up from camp last week. Harrison thought this year was even better than the last two. I asked him if that was because he now kind of knows what to expect from camp, and he thought that was a big part of it. 

When we asked him what he was looking forward to about camp, he said he liked walking around in nature and thinking. And he hoped there wouldn't be a lot of adults coming up to him and asking him if he was alright. Yep. He's our kid alright. I imagine I gave some adults some worries as a kid too ~ always had my nose in a book.

The only cat who has stuck around is Pickles. And then, I'm not sure he's not running off to some other house half of the time. 

Abigail has deserted us. We hope she comes back someday. She may have gone off to have another batch of kittens somewhere. So maybe she'll come back when they can be on their own.

Yay! There was fresh sweet corn for sale in town yesterday, so I got five dozen and made 9 quarts of frozen sweet corn. There was a pickup truck with two ladies getting 20 dozen for their frozen sweet corn. That's impressive!

Doc is "helping" by biting my garbage can and trying to get in the way.

4th of July small town celebration! 

We had a good summer meal of pulled pork sandwiches and watermelon and such. Phillip read us the Declaration of Independence per usual. It's a good thing to read every year. To remember the reasons we thought we needed a new government and then to realize what these men put on the line when they signed that document. 

Phillip also read a paragraph about what happened to those signers. We know about the ones who survived, but several fought, several were killed, many lost their fortunes to the British and died penniless, several had their wives and kids die in consequence of the war. 

It's sobering.

But back to the celebration part. 

We went to Perry, MO to ride the carousel that Papa rode as a kid. We found out that Mimi and Papa had been there shortly before us and had also ridden the carousel. :-) How fun! This is the oldest carousel in Missouri (so the sign said). It hadn't been in Perry for many years and some folks had raised money to bring it back. 

This was also the first time the kids and I saw a tractor pull. We got kiwi lemonade (for Phoebe), strawberry slushy (for Jonathan), and Amish ice cream (for me... and then all of us because it was a lot of ice cream).

Harrison is off to Silas' house for the afternoon and will see fireworks tonight. Jon and Phoebe have to work. It's been a fun day.

Why is this so beautiful?