21 years of memories!

On the 14th, Kurt and I celebrated 21 years together!

Do you know how many memories a couple can squeeze into twenty-one years? It truly boggles my mind to think of it. Like any other married couple, we have been through...

emotional highs and lows;

hard work and hardly working;

times of seemingly endless tears and times of laughing until our stomachs hurt;

healthy eating and living on junk food like kids left alone;

hospital trips and vacations on the beach;

birthing children and mourning babies that were gone before we even had a chance to hold them;

watching our friends get married and watching them go separate ways;

parenting children and building houses;

enjoying handfuls of dogs, cats, and guinea pigs, and starting businesses;

moving to new homes and visiting the same old places we like to go;

interrupted sleep and singing together around the piano;

going for walks and nice long "discussions";

easy afternoons of lunch and a matinee, and stress-filled evenings working on our budget;

and the memories go on and on...

Here's to the next twenty-one years!

My apologies

When I last opened my blog, a profane song started playing on my playlist. It wasn't a song I had chosen, and the name of the song that was supposed to be playing was not. Until I can figure out what went wrong, I have disabled my playlist from this page.

I am very sorry if any of my readers have ever heard a song that was offensive here on my blog. Please know that it was unintentional.

Swimming, Tea, and Worldview

We have been thoroughly loving our summer! Besides the usual summertime routine of swimming, swimming, swimming, we have been spending our time off enjoying our friends! I usually space out the kids' visits from friends, and definitely am not a big fan of sleepovers. But I believe I have been taken over by a much more accommodating alien body snatcher. We are having sleepovers in abundance around here, and I'm also saying yes to everything that I can. Could I possibly be hoping for future credit on these investments when it comes time this fall to say no and knuckle down on the school work? Maybe.

Anyway, besides the kids' friends, I have been having a great time visiting with my friends also. In fact, today I had three ladies over for a tea party. We discussed some things on our hearts about our Biblical worldview, and what we see going on around us. It was very encouraging, and was also one of those moments for me where I felt like my mother's daughter. I neglected to take a picture of the table, but one of the ladies said it reminded her of my mother's teas. Lord, don't let me get proud! But anyone who knows my mother would understand my desire to become half the hostess that she is!

I used my blue and white dishes with a simple white linen table cloth. I put just three tea lights in clear votives as the centerpiece. I served cucumber sandwiches, lemon bread with glaze, vanilla bread, orange and cranberry scones, shortbread cookies, dark chocolate covered almonds, and glazed pecans. Wish I would have taken a picture... of the table, AND of the guests!

Christian worldview and the state of the world and the church are hot topics for me lately, and I love to take any chance I get to talk with like minded friends. Today I got to be part of one of those great conversations. There are not many things better than a stimulating conversation with ladies who are bright, positive, and encouraging. Each of these homeschool mothers today knew where her help comes from! They all so wonderfully expressed their desire to be all that God has for them to be at this particular time in HIStory. God is sovereign over time and space, the universe, planet, our country, our town, and every aspect of our days... even just trying to get through teaching a math lesson!

Only one problem came out of the day. My new book wish list grew by a few more books. I already have Brannon Howse's Christian Worldview for Students, Christian Worldview for Children, and Building a Worldview Verse by Verse. Now I am excitedly adding Grave Influence and Put Your Beliefs to the Test to my wish list. Ah, now if I could only get all of that practically new, barely used curriculum sold, so I can have some extra book money!

What a moment it must have been...

(Excerpt from The Light and the Glory by Peter Marshall & David Manuel)


The decision was twelve to none. The Colonies had just become the United States of America.


In the silence that followed the announcement of the vote, the late afternoon sun cast its soft rays through the tall windows- on a brass candlestick standing on a green felt table-covering, a carved eagle over the door, a pair of spectacles lying on a polished desk. The magnitude of what they had done began to weigh upon them, and they realized that they and their countrymen were no longer Englishmen, but citizens of a fledgling nation barely a few minutes old. Many stared out the window. Some wept openly. Some, like Witherspoon, bowed their heads and closed their eyes in prayer.


John Hancock broke the silence; "Gentlemen, the price on my head has just been doubled!"


A wry chuckle followed, and then Samuel Adams rose: "We have this day restored the Sovereign, to Whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and... from the rising to the setting sun, may His Kingdom come."

Happy Birthday, Macy Claire!

Six candles today!!!


Some birthday posing


Jump rope, silly bands, big box of craft supplies, Polly Pocket splash & fun set, and two Disney princesses


Sprinkle cake, sprinkle icing, and a few fresh blackberries on top
(all Macy's requests)



Chasing bubbles... you can tell how hot it is by the expression on the birthday girl's face (100 degrees)


Went straight from this to change clothes for a dip in the pool


Sweet birthday girl, I love you!!!

A Charlotte Mason-style Education

A curriculum that follows Mason's recommendation of centering education around good literature looks very different from the typical curriculum used in American public and private schools. In Educating the WholeHearted Child, Clarkson states that, "Instead of lifeless, pedantic textbooks and workbooks that expected children only to remember the right answer, she insisted on reading only living books that made literature, history, geography, and science come alive, and that focused more on insights and ideas about the subject than on dry and lifeless facts."

According to Andreola, in her book A Charlotte Mason Companion, whole books are ones "that are written by a single author who shares personally his favorite subject with us, and we pick up his enthusiasm." Along with learning the above-mentioned subjects through whole books, Mason's students learned through nature studies. Nature studies consisted of long walks in the outdoors observing nature and wildlife, collecting specimens, and keeping a nature journal of their observations.

The key points of Mason's philosophy are that children are persons; children love to learn; children need a supportive atmosphere for learning; orality is essential to literacy and learning, living ideas are the natural food of the mind; active involvement is vital to learning; and that the formation of effective habits leads to a productive life.

Who is Charlotte Mason?

Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) was a British educator during the turn of the century. She became a highly respected voice in education in England; and she had great influence on British education in her time. After teaching for about a dozen years, she began traveling, writing, and lecturing about a new way of education. Since her ideas arrived on the heels of the British Industrial Revolution and Victorian English thought, they contrasted greatly to the perspective of the day. At a time when most British saw children as cheap laborers, or at least, lesser citizens than adults, Charlotte Mason challenged their thinking. She proposed that, instead of thinking that "children should be seen and not heard in a culture that viewed children as sub-persons that needed to be formed and civilized," they were in fact "a whole, maturing person with an active intelligence and an enormous capacity for learning".

Before finishing her career teaching in the school she founded in Ambleside, England, she published some popular geography books, Home Education, and the six-volume The Original Homeschooling Series. By the time of her death in 1923, almost every public school in Gloucester County and several other areas in Great Britain were using the Mason method.

The strengths of Mason's approach are an emphasis on living books; fine arts, music and poetry; verbal and writing skills; self-motivated learning; real life; and dignity of the child. Her way of educating emphasizes character development; basic learning skills, which were reading, writing, and arithmetic; the reading of many living books; the study of the fine arts (art, music, poetry); and learning through real life experiences like nature and museums.

(Quotes taken from Educating the WholeHearted Child, by Clarkson)