Photos from Wasilla

I realized that I missed posting last week's Keeping House book study.     I have been up in Alaska -- my mom's health has taken a rather sudden turn for the worse and that has kept me preoccupied enough so that I haven't been online much at all.    

Any prayers would be very much appreciated!

It has been breathlessly cold here -- down to minus 25 last night -- so I haven't been out much, but I took some pictures of the sunset last night through the upstairs window of her house.     The pictures are slightly blurry through the glass and don't do justice to the colors, but you can get an idea of the beauty -- the sunsets this far north come very early and last a long, long time especially since the sun has to sink below the mountains.

That little light in the second and third pictures?  It's someone enjoying their Martin Luther King weekend by ski-mobiling on the frozen lake!  Everyone has their own choice of enjoyment -- I am sure it was awesome being out there surrounded by the sky but the chill factor must be a beast!    Alaskans! 

In the next couple of days I'll put a book study post up but it might be shorter than usual.  

New Year Pictures

A Happy New Year!

Since I have not been posting here much and can't think of much to say I thought I would post some family pictures.  We have an unhappy tradition of family-picture-taking.   You can see that Clare is almost never the problem.  It's her brothers.  One is always sure to be frowning, or closing his eyes, or turning away, or trying to disappear off the edge of the picture or behind someone else's head..

Plus, I find California light challenging.   I will say no more. 

We went to our lake to get these pictures.  It has been historically drained to be cleaned out and have something else environmentally friendly done to it.    You can see it in the background of some of the pictures.

I don't know when all our family will be together again.  In a few days we all scatter to different parts of the Pacific coast.    To think, only 9 years ago Paddy was a newborn and my oldest was only 16!  No wonder I often feel dizzy!  

Good form, picture too backlit

A little overexposed now, Kieron is obscured and Paddy looks spacy.

Sean and Liam take a talk break

Nice background, but family all shadowy

Cute, but Sean is completely blocked

Clare and Paddy take some time off

New Camera

I'm back from Oregon where two of my sons are living. I don't have much to say, but my new camera came while I was gone, so I am trying it out on our new growth outside. Spring is finally sort of here so it's a good time to have a camera that works ;-).

Natural Therapy

They must be let alone, left to themselves a great deal, to take in what they can of the beauty of earth and heavens.  -- Charlotte Mason

 

This article on Forest Therapy -- HT As Cozy as Spring

Charlotte Mason's writings almost always turn out to have to say something about our times as well as her own.  There is a condition called Nature Deficit Disorder --  this article says that

In a typical week, only 6 percent of children ages nine to thirteen play outside on their own.

Yet outdoor play has wide-ranging benefits according to studies.





I've been trying to get motivated to bring my children outside more regularly, so maybe this will give me some incentive to actually do it.

Photo Visit to see Clare at Thomas Aquinas College

Gratuitous pic of the new chapel

Clare hanging out with her younger brothers and her Dad

Paddy being himself

The Boys

Football!

Way Post

It might be quiet on here for a little while!  I'm in planning and getting-things-started mode. I'm updating over here.

Paddy behind Liam and snake.

Northern Flying Squirrel "Barkley"

The "big kids" up at Kaiser Peak -- almost 2 miles up.

Hard to believe summer's over!  Already!

Looking at the Quotidian #1

We're heading into summer, so "Week in Review" will probably not quite work for my end-of-week wrap-ups since we won't have many academics going on. I'm going to try just logging weekly what I remember from the week past. That might be a challenge! I can hardly remember what happened an hour ago!

Summer is finally coming. Though we have only had a handful of warm days so far! Optimistically, I cleaned out the wood stove and bought beach passes for the nearby lake, and since then the weather has been brisk and cold. It is supposed to warm up, though, and we see various signs of spring, like the baby steller jays in a nest in our garage, and the carpenter ants investigating kool-aid spills in our kitchen. Kevin will have to do something about the ants -- but it's fascinating to watch their behavior on the counter, how they interact with each other and with the intruders into their space (that is, US).

I am going to try never to complain about warm weather again after this winter dragging on so much longer than our firewood supply. I still feel like I have a frozen part somewhere inside, somewhat like the increasingly tiny glacier that still remains in our front yard under the roof where the sun never shines directly.

Sean finished school last week! and is full into the swing of football camp season. He went to several long-distance ones, one in San Diego and one in Santa Barbara, and this week has a couple of local ones. He's been consulting his uncle, a chiropractor, about a stressed shoulder.

Next Wednesday, Kieron and Paddy are officially finishing their K12 year. Then we go into our summer schedule -- which I want to spend some time planning today. I think my main focus is going to be reviving old habits that I miss. For example, my older kids used to draw or color while I was reading aloud. I think this would be good for Paddy. He's developed a habit of climbing all over the place and doing gymnastics while I'm reading -- he still seems to hear everything but I think drawing would help him with the overflow energy and also get him in a more artistic mode since Art is still his least favorite subject.


Here's a handsome fellow -- the snake, I mean. Liam found him under our deck. He -- the snake, that is -- related really well to the camera, maybe because they both have one cool shiny dark eye on each side of their heads.

Weekly Wrap-Up -- Lake Edition

Finally, spring is here. It's in the low 60's up here in the mountains and in the 80's down in town! Brendan finished his last day of classes. In the intermediate algebra class he almost dropped at mid-term because he was afraid he would flunk it, he came in second in the class! Aidan went to physical therapy. Kieron finished his state testing. This afternoon, we went to the lake. I had gotten bubbles at the .99 Cent Store this morning -- what better opportunity to try them out!

Last Day of Testing

Today was the last day of Kieron's STAR testing down in town, so we got to go to the park with the young ones and feed the ducks and geese. We call them "Paddy's army".

It was a beautiful day, warmer than it is up here with the snow still on the deck!










There were ten little baby ducklings! This was the best picture I could get. My zoom feature is rudimentary.

Life continues to be busy for a while, with Brendan going into finals week and Clare coming home from college.

I have been struggling with sadness -- I don't know if it comes across from reading this blog. Last Tuesday was the first anniversary of my father's death. I miss him so much. Sometimes he seems so close and sometimes so far away. I can't put the feeling into words, so I'll use some of CS Lewis's:

And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen.

It feels a lot like waiting. Life keeps going ... I love my husband and children, framed with morning light, giving bread to the ducks, and that is real enough, but the minutes inside seem to tick by to a different clock. There's like an eternity inside that easily passing stream of time. The twisting in my stomach, the sudden shortness of breath, is a lot like suspense, only without the anticipatory edge. I can only imagine how it feels to my mother. They were the closest couple I know. When I talked to her recently she said it wasn't as bad as she expected, but then, we also discussed how easily that can turn around in a moment.

Then comes a sudden job of red-hot memory and all this "commonsense" vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.

Signs of the Season

It snowed off and on most of the second part of the week, and tonight it's foggy.

You wouldn't know it's almost May in California, would you?


A few patches of bare ground




A few brave early spring flowers

And our yearly crop of California flying squirrel babies invading our house --
they seem to think it's THEIR house.


Brendan puts them outside, and they manage to find their way back in.
I'm sure they feel warmer in here than out there!

And some of the Steller jays from last year have returned to raise their own families here (on our deck, not in the house, thank goodness) but the deck's still too snowbound for me to get out there with the camera.

So a few tiny gallant signs of the season!