Have you been wondering about beginning or continuing to home school your children?
Allow me to let you in on a secret:
You have to.
Yes, whether we like it or not, we have to home school these little blessings with which God has blessed us.
How do I know? I know it simply because all parents home school their children.
Actually.
You home school yours already.
Think for a minute:
Who taught your darling that Mom is the best in the world? Did you take him to a state institution to learn that?
Who taught him to walk? Did he receive private lessons on that subject?
Who taught him to stay seated in the high chair and grocery cart?
Who toilet trained him?
Who succeeded in teaching him to pick up after himself?
Trust and obey: This duo is one of the most important lessons in all of life. We have taught these most important lessons. Yet, do we somehow feel we would not be good teachers of minor things?
We have taught our children nearly to master speaking the English language, one of the toughest on earth, as if they were natives, and yet, do we somehow feel that we are inadequate to teach the ABCs?
Or is it only that home school seems like too much work? Were we ready to be at ease and to pass them on to some other mother (oops—I mean, teacher)?
Two people, including a security guard, were reportedly shot this morning at the headquarters of the pro-life group Family Research Council.
According to information provided to LifeNews from a Washington pro-life source, a man posing as an intern shot the guard at the FRC office located at 801 G Street, NW. FRC staffer Anna Maria Hoffman added more information on Twitter, “Our security guard Leo [Johnson] got shot in the arm. Please keep him in your prayers.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins confirmed the security officer was shot and said in a statement, “The police are investigating this incident. Our first concern is with our colleague who was shot today. Our concern is for him and his family.”
View of the peak of Puy de Sancy and cable car station above Mont Dore.
I don’t know how we got to the top, but we were inside a very small building atop a tower, like a firetower in a forest. My memory of many of the details of that day are lost in the cobwebs of childhood. I do remember a row of windows around the entire building, and a telescope of sorts.
I know it was a tourist attraction because there were other people up inside this building with us. In fact, it was somewhat crowded. Amazing what we do and don’t remember. I remember the floor was unvarnished hardwood and dirty, and my dress was red.
And I was wearing patent leather shoes with slick soles.
The attraction in this room on stilts, besides the magnificent view, was the ride back down to earth in a sort of passenger car on a cable. Great fun, like a zipline for civilized folks with small children. People ascended and descended regularly, and we viewed the view while awaiting our turn.
I was so little. Yet I remember a sense of needing to hurry. I suppose the quicker people loaded and unloaded the cars, the more money the owners earned. Finally we approached the doorway where the car was dangling, waiting for us to board. I watched this car swaying and heard it creaking while the owner reminded my parents of the huge space between the building and the car, with about a hundred feet of space below it. My parents cautioned me and explained the extreme danger in stepping wrong.
I froze. Anyone could see the gap was far larger than my tiny feet, and, in fact, my whole self could fit easily right through that gap. Of course, it was too huge a leap for a terrified little one.
I dug in. I was scared and wanted down. I cried.
That’s when my parents lifted me. I still was terrified, but they overcame my will with their own strength and jointly lifted me over that yawning hole, down into that cable car. I still was terrified. They had seen it was too hard for me and, after warning me not to struggle against them in my fear, had mercifully done it for me.
I am sure the view was spectacular on the ride down, but I don’t remember that part.
I do remember my parents’ loving mercy and surpassing knowledge and strength.
And I think of the gap between this world, that we think is so real, and the other world that exists all around us, that is really real — the Heavenly Kingdom.
The step we must take to leap from this world into the other is terrifying and too far, in our eyes.
But the loving mercy of our Heavenly Father and the Jerusalem Above, which is our mother, stand ready to bridge that gap for us, if we only will not fight it.
Love lifted me.
Love lifted me.
When nothing else could help,
Love lifted me.
Oh, well, one night while we enjoyed fajitas at the local restaurant, their T.V. was on and we saw a couple of guys dive.
They were good.
But . . .
. . . I felt my blood pressure rising and just decided to be cool. Why spoil a wonderfully fresh meal with nearly naked guys getting wet for fun and/or profit,
albeit very skillfully?
They say everybody who was anybody was watching. I don’t know.
WordPress says those who were not watching are rare.
Other times, I was mowing, blogging, counseling, bathing, cleaning house, sleeping, washing clothes, baking, wrapping gifts, ironing, helping my grown son move.
Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!”
But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.
One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.
When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”
She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. Then she told him this story: “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”
When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.
I am so accustomed to being wrong. People tell me I am wrong all the time.
They say I pronounce words wrong, and I shrug.
I am a linguist . . .
They say I load my dishwasher wrong.
I offer them the job . . .
But in the kitchen, I am usually right. I love to cook from scratch and invent recipes. I love to eat and watch others loving eating. Since all my kids are spoiled with extraordinary food, they all have learned how to cook, at least the basics of my secrets, and have begged for my recipes, freely given, before they would move out — even all four of my sons.
So-o-o-o, when I get it wrong in the kitchen, I am miffed at myself. No excuse. You know how to do this and you just didn’t do it.
That’s how I talk.
How ironic that since I believe in no excuses in the kitchen, today the photo challenge should be “wrong”. Sighs.
Today I burned a whole pan of rolled sugar cookies. These are the fiddly ones you bake only when the grandkids are present, but I volunteered to donate these for a charity function, so had a nonchalance that proved expensive:
What can I say?
I could make excuses about an important phone conversation,
but I know to take the timer with me on such occasions.
Home's Cool! 