(this is booklover hacking her mom's blog)

Happy Mother's Day Mom!!!!!

I love you and I hope you have a wonderful day this Sunday.

Love Amy

Who does most of the teaching at your house?  Probably Mom.  Join Melissa Markham for the Mother's Day edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. (Now, if I can only find a few hours to check out all those interesting-looking entries...)
 
If you would like to join in and submit a post for next week's Carnival, fill out this carnival submission form. 

Sorry I'm late, everyone.  I'm busy this week!  Here's the latest Carnival of Homeschooling, hosted by HomeschoolBuzz.com.  Click on this link to see some visions of the future.

Warning: If you have already read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie to your toddler a zillion times, this will seem like a repeat.

All I wanted to do was wash the curtains in my bedroom and bathroom.  Honestly.  I don't know how these little tiny jobs turn into three-hour projects!  I took down the dusty curtains and threw them in the wash, then hung them on the line.  In five minutes they were ready to be hung up again.  But then I thought, I should really wash these windows first.  Before washing windows, though, I needed to move the horizontal blinds, cough, cough, sneeze!  Better clean those, too. Upon further examination, the windowsills needed a good scrubbing. So I did that. But what is the point of washing only the insides of the windows, when the screens and the exterior of the windows contain 20% of the dust in the surrounding desert? Off came the screens, and I began scrubbing. The girls saw what a fun time I was having, and pretty soon I was out of a job,  Tom Sawyer style.  

I know you're curious. Why are all the girls matching? They were planning ahead for a game of tag in the dark last night, which they did, with Kristy's kids and their friend, Mackenzie.  No, Alizona and Booklover are not twins. And yes, Emily seems to have a conviction against wearing a pony-tail in her hair.

The crowning moment was when my kids THANKED ME for "letting" them help! (LOL! I love it.)

(Please pardon the veranda floor... we've been meaning to get to that for two years now...)

My earlier post on cactus (with a little help from a kind commenter) has inspired me to try making cactus jelly.  We will have to wait until later in the summer to do that, but in the meantime I have suddenly become interested in photographing and learning about the other species we have in our yard. This one is my favorite -- ocotillo.  This pd photo is nicer than the one I took with houses in the background.

Ocotillo are tall and spindly and grow up to about 20 ft. high, depending on the variety.  They bloom from March to June (or later), depending on rainfall.  This one blooms each time it rains (which is not often this time of year!) or whenever it is watered.  I love the flame-like clusters of flowers at the top of each stalk, because they seem to add a touch of gracefulness to the harshness of the environment here. They are beautiful waving in the breeze.

(Above photo by Amy.)

Amy pulled one of the flowers apart and gave us a great view of the stamen, anthers, and pollen.

The bark of this cactus is beautiful.  Young stalks are green and look like several stalks have been glued together.  As the plant matures, the "seams" separate and dry, leaving beautiful variegation.

When the leaves have all dried up, only the stalk and thorns are left.  But as soon as it rains, here come little buds, just above the thorns.  I prefer these obvious thorns over the nearly invisible, fine stickers that many other cacti are armed with!

And for those of you who are trivia buffs or mathematicians, I have two more pieces of interesting news. One, Alison discovered the Fibonacci spiral when she looked down the length of a cut piece of ocotillo stalk. Two, if you are ever stranded out in the desert wilderness, and you just happen to have a match, and you also just happen to have a good, dry piece of ocotillo, you can start a good signal fire.  Burning ocotillo sends up a black, greasy smoke. (File that away with my earlier tip on Elmer's glue.)

It's been a bittersweet day. Our baby has had her training wheels taken off -- a great big event for her and for me. The baby is growing up!  What happens next?? Reading? No, been there, done that. Tying shoes?
Here, she doesn't know Dad isn't holding on.
From that to this in just a few minutes!
Now we are 87% cyclists in this family. One more to go... (that's me, lol.)

Recently I lost Emily at Kmart. She doesn’t normally wander away, but when she didn’t see me she thought I had left her. How many times have I told her, “I would NEVER leave you”? But, leaning on her own understanding, Emily went out the door in a hurry!  When I looked up she was GONE. Without a trace! I called her name repeatedly, but she could not hear me!  After tearfully wandering in the parking lot for a bit, Emily actually thought about asking the taxi man to take her home, or maybe she could walk home by herself. But more than she wanted to be home, she really just wanted her mommy! Shortly my daughter was discovered by a K-Mart employee, who took her back inside the store. Emily went along willingly and sorrowfully, knowing she was helpless and in danger of being run over or stolen away, and very sorry for not staying with her mom. We were tearfully but happily reunited a few moments later, and I spent the rest of the afternoon recovering from a near heart attack.

What a picture these circumstances lend us.  If you have wandered from the Lord, there are some things you need to realize.  First of all, God has promised that will never, ever leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5), so stay right in the place where you were last with him. Keep doing what you know he wants you to do for this moment, and the next, and the next, until he makes himself known to you again. When you don’t “see” him, don’t panic. He is still there. Just trust him and wait on him.

Second, as a wandering Christian, you are not “lost”. You are still saved. Unlike me, our heavenly Father is never an irresponsible parent (*blush*). If you are truly saved, he is holding you in both hands, never to let you go. (“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one." John 10:28,29; “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” Psalm 139:10) He knows where you are at every moment, even when you are far away from him! (“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." Psalm 139:7,8) He knows that when you are away from him, you are not only helpless, but you are in danger, too. You are in danger of losing your way, as Demas did (2 Timothy 4:10), in danger of wild beasts (“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,” 1 Peter 5:8), and in danger of living without the blessings of God on your life. Are you aware how precarious your circumstances are?

Next, before you can get help finding the Lord again, you have to be willing to admit that you have left him! That is called confession. Real repentance will make you willing to turn around and go back to him. No one can make you go back to fellowship with Christ if you don’t want to, but aren’t you miserable without him? The Bible says the Lord Jesus calls his sheep by name. Can you hear him calling your name as you wander? He loves you and he left all to win your soul, just as the good shepherd left the ninety and nine to find the one little sheep that had left him. (“How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?” Matthew 18:12.)  You belong to Jesus Christ!

Finally, what a joyous occasion it will be when you and your Saviour find each other again! He is a good God, a wonderful Saviour! The Bible says there is actually joy in heaven when a sinner repents! (“I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth”, Luke 15:7)  The whole population of heaven is excited about your return. There is nothing better than being restored to fellowship with Jesus, except not losing that fellowship in the first place.  I was SO happy to have my dear child back, and Emily has stayed very close to me ever since.  But we both would have been better off not going through that experience! 

If you have never been saved, the Bible says you are in darkness, and you do not know where you are going.  You may think you know where you are, but you do not know the way Home.  If you have been saved and you are away from God, going Home might be the easy way out, but having your fellowship with Christ restored right now would be so much better! Be warned – getting back to him will take longer than it did to get away from him.  But the results will be worth your trouble.

To my children's great astonishment and envy, I have added a low-budget c-box to my sidebar.  It has been suggested that I move it up a bit so that it is more visible, but I have a good reason for leaving it down there where everyone can't see it.  I am telling you right now that it is there, so now you know.   

Biochemist needed.  Must also be an expert in chemistry, mathematics, construction, physics, engineering, geology, and especially, Bible.  Must be able to answer the following questions in less than ten minutes, plus other questions as assigned:

What is life?
How do we know something is alive? 
When does it become alive?
When exactly does it die?
How does a cell die? Why?
How long does it take for your blood to get through your body?
Why can you hold your breath for longer than it takes to get all your blood through your body?
What do cells do with oxygen?
How come plants use carbon dioxide in the daytime and oxygen in the nighttime?
What is the difference between a plant and an animal?
Is there such a thing as something that is both a plant and an animal?
How come your blood doesn't get stuck in your feet?
How do they extract DNA?
How do they get it out of the cell?
How do they put new DNA in a cell?
Why isn't your heart in your toes?
What are lung cells made of?
If you have two perfect spheres and you touch them to each other, they are touching at an infinitely small point, right?  But if atoms were square, then they would touch at finite points. Are atoms circles? Spheres?
Is there a mathematical equation that proves it?
If an object is traveling down a road at 5 mph, in order to reverse direction, it will need enough force to go 10 mph, because it has to stop and reverse direction, right?
Plus, for the same problem, is the object actually stopped for one instant?
What keeps electrons spinning around atoms?
How did Einstein figure out that e=mc², and why does it matter that it is?
If lithium is a gas, how do they make batteries out of it?

I'm sure I learned the technical answers to these questions somewhere between tenth grade and my senior year of college.  Someone should have warned me my oldest daughter would be giving me a test twenty-five years later.