Glory Quilts

Let's Pretend Christmas Doesn't Exist and is not Happening...

For those of us who regard this season as a holy celebration, the secular hype and the politically correct avoidance of the word "Christmas" can be extremely irritating. I found this great quote from CS Lewis on my friend  Marcelyn's blog and am keeping it in mind this month:

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell. ~ C.S. Lewis

It's still Christmas!

Have a blessed holy season!

ANNOUNCEMENT!

Announcing the engagement of my son Brad to Renee Knight. Renee is a lovely girl, and she brings with her a precious bonus - 2 yo Alanna. In one weekend, I have gained a daughter and a granddaughter. How blessed I am!!

The Best Christmas Tree Ever

37 Degrees at 7:30 this morning. I hate fall.

Brrrrrr..............

We turned the heat on yesterday. Heat is so expensive that we put it off as long as possible.

The flannel sheets are on the beds and the storm windows are in place. Most of the windows need caulking, though, and we will probably cover them all with plastic. This is such a big house, with high ceilings,tall windows and wood floors... We have two furnaces - one for the upstairs and one on the main floor. The basement and the attic are unheated - we just use them for storage, laundry, the freezer, etc.

I have about 100# of pears in boxes on the porch, awaiting processing. They are DELICIOUS Bartlett pears, from the tree of some church family. The boys went over last weekend and picked them, but they weren't ready then. They are just right right now!

They aren't sprayed, so they are kind of small. Not many of them would be good to just pick up and eat, unless you cut them with a knife. I think I will probably just make them into pear sauce for now and freeze it in Ziploc bags. When I get back from Washington, I might make some Carmel Spice Pear Butter to give as Christmas gifts. That's a fussy recipe, so I am not going to bother with it now. It starts with browning 4 cups of sugar in a frying pan!
I finished the class samples for my Washington classes. You can see them here:

Chewelah 2006

Do take a look! I am pretty pleased with them.

I have been beating myself up about  procrastination, but you know... it was a really busy and stressful summer and fall. I probably could have done better, and next year I will try to spread them all out instead of sewing 13 quilts and 4 garments in three weeks. I do need more self-discipline when it comes to sewing. I don't understand it... I LOVE being there. I love teaching classes. I love the women who take the classes. I stay with my best friend. So why do I put off making the samples and planning the schedule??

I'm having attitude issues again about living in town. Going to church is the hardest. Well meaning people keep asking me, "So how are you liking living in town?" Usually it's someone who lives in town, so the response "It sucks." is not appropriate. The house is nice, though. Of course, for the past three weeks I have mostly stayed in my sewing room...

Thoughts on the Crocodile Hunter

The Last First Day of School

Labor Day

As a special treat for my readers, I will NOT share my political opinions re Labor Day.

We have been painting and cleaning today. I don't know why our house is so much dirtier here in town than it was in the country, but it IS. YUCK. Dust everywhere. The dog comes inside now, fairly frequently, and it's a wonder that he isn't bald as an egg - surely the amount of dog hair drifting around my house is greater than one dog can shed. I wish I had more hours in my day! I want to do some scrapbooking/framing, and I really  need to sew instead.

We start school tomorrow. I will have to do something fun, to make it special - my very last first day of school!

I have put it off long enough...

Its time to plan school. This is my youngest son's senior year! It should be special. I should be sad that it's almost over. Regrettably, I am not. Perhaps I will feel weepy later, but right now every fiber in me is rebelling. I don't want to do this.  It was more fun when there were two of them, of course. Last year, with just Matthew at home, it was boring. Neither of us liked it. Now we have to start another year, and it's time to get plans in order, because we will start on Tuesday.

I am pretty sure that my OC, driven personality is the problem here. I thought he was pretty much done with school, except  for composition and finishing his Calculus book. And Spanish. And 20th century history. And we really should do some more literature. And he does need some Anatomy. Because he wants a career in music ministry, we need some serious Bible classes and Music, of course. And competitive Forensics is tops on his priority list -  I wanted to graduate him last year, but he wants another year of speech and debate. And we really should finish up  that Latin course. And he really needs a better grasp of Current Events.

I have daily writing drills and grammar worksheets for him - 15 minutes a day will do both of those. I did the  writing prompts on my own - mostly famous quotations - and I got the grammar exercises from dailygrammar.com. For Current Events, just M-W-F, I have him spending 15 minutes on the internet news. Fox news every day, and then a rotating schedule of liberal and conservative news sites to work on worldview/discernment skills.  Anatomy is easy - he is using the anatomy coloring book. Both of his brothers used it, too. (Back when I homeschooled Brad, in 1988, I had to go to the college book store to buy it. We didn't have so many  resources then!)  So for Anatomy he just reads the book and colors the  pictures. Calculus is easy, too - that WONDERFUL man on the DIVE CD does all the teaching and then Matthew does the work on his own. For  Spanish, we use the Rosetta Stone program available free through  the public library. It's not even  adequate... I MUST find some affordable classes to sign him up for. sigh....   We are finishing Latina Christiana II, and that is actually kind of enjoyable.

Composition............. I really neglected Composition with Alex until he took his first college class online. He had to write a LOT of essays. His whole grade was based on his essays.  Like Brad, he would rather have his toenails pulled out than write creatively, so it was hard on both of us. His first essay got a C. We had thought it  was pretty good! It was at that point we found Jensen's Format Writing, and after that he got all A's on his essays. He got an A for  the college course, too! But writing each essay was still a huge ordeal and we were so frustrated with each other. So ANYHOW... I really don't want to teach Composition again. It was so ugly  and stressful last time. Matthew will enjoy writing creatively... he just won't like being made to write correctly. He won't like the format and will be certain that his own ideas are much better.

Just thinking about teaching Composition is making me twitch, so let's move on to the next subject....

BIBLE! Doctrine, theology.... a serious course. We have enough books around here that he could just read, but so much of his school is just reading! I think I may end up with a PACES sort of program, actually. I used LifePacs with Alex for his senior year, and while the first few workbooks were pretty lightweight, the  rest were solid. I want a NT and OT Survey sort of thing. He's never done workbooks. It will be good for him.  And easy for me to correct, because he can't argue with me.

Literature is pretty easy, too. I use a variety of resources online and from my bookshelves. We still have to finish up  reading and our online discussion of Persuasion, by Jane Austen. That is possibly the dullest book ever written, but we WILL finish it. He really needs to have one book that represents the female authors of that period. He is then reading Tom Sawyer, which will be much more entertaining. As usual, I will select books that tie into the time period we are studying. I also want to cover some poetry. Well, not WANT to, precisely, but I probably SHOULD.

Then we come to History. We have studied history very very thoroughly over the years. So extensively that my boys know very little about anything after the War Between the States, because we ran out of time before  we got to the 20th century! This year I plan to do 20th Century history, with an emphasis on the United States. I found great resources online to do the AP US History course, skipping the earlier years  and starting after the Reconstruction period. As I research it and review the materials, however, I just don't think I can bring myself to use it. The whole thing is slanted SO far to the liberal left as to be unrecognizable as history! Huge portions are given to bemoaning social injustices and the oppression of women and the poor. They drag in obscure women and devote large amounts of time to them while minimizing the contributions of any white male people. Christianity is portrayed as narrow-minded and oppressive, of course, and my role as a wife and mother is mocked openly and attributed to my arrogant desire to be regarded as "upper class". If it were just a mild slant, evident in a few chapters, I would probably still use the course. But I just can't do it. There was more to the War Between the States than freeing slaves, and more to Westward Expansion than killing buffalo and Indians.  All of those things were bad - VERY bad! - but they were not the whole picture of our nation's history. When my sons learn about WWII, I hope they learn about Hitler and the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, the deliberate German bombing of residential London,  the Holocaust, etc. This course focuses strongly on our mistreatment of the Japanese Americans and the rise of women in the factories. And the great evil of bombing Japan, of course. And Zoot suits, for some reason.  While I may still use the timeframe outline, I think I will find other resources for learning what REALLY happened in the 20th century.

I don't know what to do with music. He needs it all. He can play the electric, acoustic and bass guitars and also the  drums, but  he knows very little "about" music. I need to find a resource. He, of course, believes he already knows it all. I wish we had a piano or large keyboard. Art History was pretty thoroughly covered last year. I hope to take him to some museums in Chicago this year. Fine arts are a very weak spot for me. I am such a practical person. 

I refuse to do any of it today. I worked on it all day yesterday and ended up frustrated and annoyed. Maybe I will do something about it tomorrow.