Learning Notes

Sunday, Sept. 21st - 

We spent the day in church.  It was my first morning teaching the adult Sunday School class so I was running around scattering Bibles and pens and bit of paper and trying to debate how to explain the Apocrypha to an unknown number of adults with unknown Christian education backgrounds.  The children sat through most of the service and then afterwards sat in the hall, colouring Bible pictures.  After church there was nap, during which I listened to the eldest playing 'church' in his room.  His theology is coming along pretty well, and all of a sudden he'll launch out into something totally heretical and hilarious.  We followed David to the nursing home service and played at the park and talked about wild mushrooms and whether there are trolls living under bridges. 

Monday, Sept. 22nd - 

S went on errands with David and on their walk they discussed numbers and what plumbers do.  Once he got home we tried more numbers again - there seems to be some difficulty with his understanding of the difference between a number and a letter.  I'd ask him to draw an animal with a certain number of legs and we'd count them (an octopus with 8, etc.)  Then he practiced drawing shapes.  

After table work we sat and read a book about dragons and then the two oldest went outside and built a huge fort in the backyard while I tried to figure out what we were doing about S's physical activity for the fall.  We did soccer this summer, but I was disappointed in it.  Swimming was on the schedule for the fall but now that may not happen, and regardless of whether it does or not I still need to figure out what we're doing over the winter so now I'm calling arenas and community centres and hoping that somehow something will fit into our schedule.

There is nap time for C, and quiet time for S, who plays with Lego in his room and, when asked, tells me that he is making Batman tools .  David pops in to tell me that the Operation Christmas Child kick-off is this Saturday at the same time as the church-wide auction, which reminds me that I'm supposed to be baking for this auction.  He also tells me that the congregation members who are moving auction items from our garage are arriving TWICE on Wed., not once, so I need to be here, with occupied children, for the entire afternoon.  And then he goes outside to pack away the barbecue and throw out the tent the children have destroyed over the summer.

In the afternoon we work around the house and watch Victorian Farm.

Tuesday, Sept. 23rd -

I had to funnel prayer requests to prayer chains this morning, so the children were all ignored and given large amounts of dip to consume on the upholstered furniture.  Super fun for all.  They watched educational cartoons - The Cat In The Hat episode about pandas and a math show.  Then David took them to the library for story time and a craft, which turned out not to be going on so he took them to the grocery store instead.  The rest of the day sort of disintegrated in terms of education.

Wednesday, Sept. 24th - 

The children watched a Cat In The Hat show about hibernation and then played outside in the morning; S came in to show me how spruce branches are prickly if you stroke them one way and smooth another, so we had a discussion about angles.  Then everyone trooped in to work on a puzzle about fish, which was interrupted by a trip to the grocery store - we also started practicing tying our shoes today.

I hoped to talk about numbers and colours at the store but the kids were waaay too crazy.  After the groceries David had the morning Bible study group at the church, which we joined him for - S did a match-up alphabet game and coloured pictures.  After lunch everyone rested, somehow...kind of.  I had a number tracing page for S to work on ready to go if the noise level got too much in his room and I did some curriculum planning work.  I went to get a book on spruce out of the big box of homeschool non-fiction (to follow up with the conversation we had had in the morning), but ended up finding a nature book that got Sl interested in fossils and sea cucumbers - so we got to talk about how fossils are made.  And then he found a book on making castles.  That was pretty much the end of anything schoolish.

Thursday, Sept. 25th

The children watched a National Geographic kids show on Australia while I tried to wrap my head around the day, but they didn't like it and refused to sit for it so instead I gave C a chore and S sat down with his workbook  for about an hour - he did a lot of work on numbers, colours and shapes and then started alphabet work.  I was amazed by how great he was at his first lesson on left and right, but he had a lot of trouble understanding simple patterns so we skipped that and will revisit it sometime later.

I was gone for the rest of the morning and exhausted and working on housework for the afternoon, but knowing how much book work we'd done made me feel okay about not doing a lot of other school today.

Friday, Sept. 26th

We did nothing today.  Really.  I was overwhelmed with church things.

Saturday, Sept. 27th

Today was the big auction, and I had a lot to do so S was  on his own for a lot of school stuff.  I had him come with me to the grocery store and on the way we played a 'matching colours' game he made up, and we talked about how God created people and looked at footprints and revisited the idea of rocks eroding after contact with water.  

Auction

It's Wednesday, the day I've been dreading all week - the day that people from the church come to help empty out the garage and cart all the stuff that has been getting shoved in there for weeks to the auction that the congregation is holding on Saturday.  It's going to be a big, substantial event that will undoubtedly fill the hall and empty the garage, but I don't like the stress involved with it at all.

Not only does the garage emptying happen today, in two sections with two different crews, but I figure why not make it a whole DAY of auction stress and also bake the dessert I'm supposed to be delivering.  I was going to make baklava, but then (and this is going to explain a lot to you about how remote this place is) no one had heard of baklava.  I asked many people...okay I think one person liked it but most were confused.

So then I thought 'do I bake this dessert that will not get purchased because everyone is so confused about what it even is?'  And now I'm backing and forthing about the whole thing but think that what will actually happen is I'll make cookies.

Unmarriageable children and too much food.

You know, for me one of the absolute hardest things about the Christian life is somehow trying to maintain this acknowledgement of grace and gratefulness and such in the face of what is really a crummy time.  Like, a super crummy time.  Crummy?  Yes, okay, that's the word I'll use.  It's also the period of life when I find it really hard to fight against the ingrained training of my pre-Christian years when 'crummy', as an example, would not have been the word I would have chosen.

Yesterday I don't even think I managed to get on the computer at all, and of course my inner desire to blog daily has been totally hampered by life, mostly in the form of the eldest daughter, who is two and trying to kill me.  I swear that child is one good screaming fit away from needing an exorcism.  "How she will EVER find someone to marry her is beyond me" I say, and David responds with "Well, they say there's someone for everyone."  And then we look dubiously at our eldest daughter and sort of tilt our heads like dogs do when they hear a far away noise.  Except none of the noise here can be termed 'far away'.  None of it.

Hallelujah!  Onwards and Upwards!

I moped yesterday with what we call a First World Problem around here - We had a LOT of food in the house, and then I kept buying more, and then I decided to stop buying it so that we could use up what we had, and then surprisingly my clay jug did not perpetually refill itself with oil and my bag with flour and lo!  We ran terribly low on food.  And so then I bought a Whole Bunch on Thursday, and came home and people had somehow sensed through the universe that the pastor's family had been low on food but the message had been on time delay and so when I arrived back at the house the next two days was FULL of people bringing me yet more food, and now I cannot, honestly cannot, fit anything else in the cupboards, fridge or freezer.  Which actually means that there are several grocery bags on the floor in my kitchen which are holding the over spill of food. And my dishes are ornamented with cans of pasta sauce, and there are two giants bags of onions in my linen cupboard, and 10lbs of potatoes in with the saucepans.

And here we are, on a cold but otherwise nice looking day, and I am full up with chores and things. It's just all cyclical, and perhaps I'm crazy for this but come what may I'm blogging every day this week.  I am.

Fruit

I was lying in bed last night reading the last of a book I wanted to return to the library today and thinking over what I'd accomplished.  I'd say not much, except that in the evening Samuel and I hiked out to the park and picked a bag of crabapples and then over to an old apple tree in town and got some of those as well.  Best apples in town in my opinion.  And then we came home and I wrote down what I needed to make pickled apples and apple chutney, so I'll be doing that today and it makes me feel better.

Today is Tuesday and so it's also the day for stitching group and I'm trying to decide if I should bring the sweater I'm crocheting for Samuel because it's so cold I should really get that finished, or if I should bring some rug stuff and start another rag rug.  It's a nice problem to have.

I froze 6 litres of peaches yesterday and I can't wait for the cold February day to come when I can pull some out of the freezer and make a cobbler.  It's a wonderful feeling knowing that I have them and the strawberries and rhubarb.  I wish I'd managed to get some raspberries in as well.

I went out and cut away at the weeds overtaking the raspberry canes in the backyard and I'm more confident now that next year we'll get some fruit.  I'd cut them all down last year so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that they didn't fruit but I was disappointed.

Rambling thoughts about getting ready for winter

All around the area here people are getting ready for winter and handling the excess of fall.  It really is fall, too, all you have to do is look at the trees everywhere to see it.  I was out last night in the garden and my tomatoes have decided to actually grow fruit now, in September, which is not great and I'm going to have to look and see if I can keep them from frost long enough to get something off them.  I pulled half the beans as well and the almost last zucchini but I'm still holding out on the peas.  Every time I think the peas must be done and I should pull them they get more flowers.

Notes from this year:

I will not get peas that need to be removed from their pods again.
I will not buy climbing beans.

I think, no, I know, that I will need to go to the farmers to get more produce to put up.

And whatever I do is going to have to be done fairly soon because mornings are very dew laden these days and I just know that one morning soon I'm going to look out and the fields will be white with frost.

Anyway, today I need to grate another zucchini for the freezer and blanch a handful of beans as well - I'm almost out of produce for the freezer.  Next will be a focus on, I think, probably fruits.  And I'm debating whether to pickle but my husband's family makes such wonderful pickles that I feel as though there's no point in that.  Salsa, though, I should make salsa.  And relishes, maybe chutneys.

I spent a long time last night organizing a huge pile of knitting needles that my father in law gave to me.  It took a while because, seriously, it was a huge pile.  I can't imagine how I would need this many needles.  I don't even knit socks so why I'd need so many sock needles...but I can't help but want them.  It must be something in the cold air.

Off to get the car dealt with today.  I think there's a leak in the oil tank now, oh my word this car is such a pit.  All I can think of is that if it isn't the oil tank, then what is it?  Hopefully it's cheap, and just somehow makes the car manage for the winter because we cannot buy another car right now and we're really hopeful of a trip to visit some family this coming weekend who we haven't seen in a long time.

Alright, off to handle the day.

books

I have plenty of things to blog about but then I sit down to write and my head goes blank.  I think it's a combination of stress and the certainty that anything I debate in my head at this stage of life is foolish or uninteresting, which, while possibly true, is not an excuse for not writing it down. There is one topic I keep coming back to and at least remembering when I sit, and that's what I've been reading lately, so that's what you're going to get.

First up is Michael Pollan's newest book - Cooked.  It's a history of why we cook our food, and the methods etc.  It's supposed to be that, at least.  It's really more a discussion of how to cook a few specific dish in each section.  I've enjoyed the writing he did on cooking one pot meals more than the discussion on barbecuing and I'm really looking forward to the section on fermentation.

Let It Go by Karen Ehman - this is the Christian reading I'm doing.  It's a book about learning to let go of controlling situations, which I think is something we should all be reading.  A great book but an awful writing style.

Rural Free by Rachel Peden - a farmwife's journal from decades ago, excellent.  I love journals and her writing is exquisite.

Hens Dancing by Raffaella Barker - I don't know yet since I've only just started but I'm thinking this might be a romance.  If this is the case I won't like it.

There you go.  I wish the list were more interesting but, well, that's about it for me these days.