Category: Miscellaneous
When I read Last Child in the Woods, I thought it was a little melodramatic. After reading this story, I guess I was wrong.
After three weeks of clearing brush and poison ivy, scrounging up plywood and green paint, digging holes and pouring concrete, Vincent, Justin and about a dozen friends did manage to build it — a tree-shaded Wiffle ball version of Fenway Park complete with a 12-foot-tall green monster in center field, American flag by the left-field foul pole and colorful signs for Taco Bell Frutista Freezes.
But, alas, they had no idea just who would come — youthful Wiffle ball players, yes, but also angry neighbors and their lawyer, the police, the town nuisance officer and tree warden and other officials in all shapes and sizes. It turns out that one kid’s field of dreams is an adult’s dangerous nuisance, liability nightmare, inappropriate usurpation of green space, unpermitted special use or drag on property values, and their Wiffle-ball Fenway has become the talk of Greenwich and a suburban Rorschach test about youthful summers past and present.
Of my goodness! "Inappropriate usurpation of green space"! Call in the National Guard! Those boys should be home playing video games! They most certainly should not be out building a wiffle-ball field in an empty lot owned by the city full of "weeds, brush and poison ivy!" Playing? Outdoors? In a non-adult organized and supervised activity? What is this world coming to????
< / sarcasm off >
By the way, we picked up a great "boy" movie at our Boy Scout office last week:
We watched it together as a family movie Saturday night and everyone, including Dave and I, enjoyed it! It follows the life of a man, Lem Siddons, who leaves his traveling jazz band to 'put down roots' in the quintessential Small Town, America. We laughed and cried our way through this movie .... and the boys have asked me every day since to watch it again. Definitely two thumbs up!
HT: Neptunus Lex
Category: Miscellaneous
Here is the other part of the Book Meme from Dayna's blog:
1. Who is your favorite author and why?
Favorite authors....ooh. This is a hard one. I really like: John MacArthur, Jane Austin, John Bunyan, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, JRR Tolkien, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Watson, C.H. Spurgeon, and Elisabeth Elliot.
I have to say Elizabeth Prentiss is my favorite though because of Stepping Heavenward and More Love to Thee: the Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss.
Stepping Heavenward is a novel written in the 1800's that follows the life of a girl, Katherine Mortimer, from age 16 to just before her death. Over and over throughout Katy's early life, I saw my own behavior and thoughts written down ... being selfish, disobedient, wanting to run with the crowd, falling in "love" with unworthy boys, etc.
Then, watching her grow as a young woman and newly wed. Seeing her sin even though she herself didn't see it at the time showed me how often I do the exact same thing and don't blink an eye -- until later when I am convicted about my words or attitudes or thoughts! The inspiring thing about all of her struggles -- with her father-in-law, sister-in-law, and husband -- they force her to go to God! It shows me is that God uses everything in our life, but often the unpleasant, to teach us and to help us grow into more Christ-like people. I knew this intellectually, but to see it actually lived out was life changing.
More Love to Thee: the Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss is a collection of Elizabeth's diaries, letters, and essays by others who knew her. She suffered greatly throughout her life. I came across this book after our baby Benjamin died. I was so struck after learning that her second child died at the age of four in January of one year, she gave birth in April, and the newborn baby died in May of that same year. When I read that chapter, I just cried right through it. Her strength and faith in the midst of her sufferings have been such a consolation and inspiration to me.
2. Who was your first favorite author and why?
Rebecca Caudill. My first favorite book was "The Best Loved Doll".
It's the story of a little girl named Betsy who is invited to a party. At the party, there will be prizes handed out for "oldest doll", "best dressed doll", and the "doll who can do the most things." Betsy has a hard time deciding which doll to bring to the party. She has dolls that fit into those categories, but at the last minute she takes Jennifer, her favorite doll -- an ugly, ragged doll with a faded dress and cracked nose. I read this story over and over again as a child!
3. Who's the most recent addition to your favorite authors and why?
I don't know if she qualifies as a favorite author yet, but I just finished The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, and I'm still thinking about it a week and a half later. The novel follows the life of a poor farmer in pre-Revolutionary China. The story presents a dichotomy between poverty and wealth, young and old, faithful and false -- all within and around the life of this farmer. The ideas in this book are so profound -- I want to re-read it already.
I don't know who to tag for this. Anyone who is interested, consider yourself tagged!
Category: Miscellaneous
Dayna over at Contra Mundum has brought the book meme back to life and I tagged myself! Is that allowed? {grin}
I picked up a wonderful book at church today and have really been enjoying it this afternoon.
Here's fifth through eighth sentence on page 123:
"If God says to us, "You are mine", we shall be his forever: 'This God is our God for ever and ever' (Psa. 48:14). You cannot say you have health, and you shall have it forever; you have a child, and you shall have it forever; but if God is your God, you shall have him forever. The covenant of grace is a royal charter, and this is the happiness of it, it is made for eternity."
Want to play along? Here are the rules:
- Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages.)
- Open the book to page 123.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the next three sentences.
- Tag five people. Or not. I'm in favor of just opening up for anyone who wants to play along.
Category: Miscellaneous
We had such a wonderful visit with my grandparents in North Carolina. I miss them already! But, it is nice to be home. There's nothing like sinking into your own bed at the end of a long day after a week away from home. :-)
One really neat thing we did this week was take a sailboat ride 6 1/2 miles out into the ocean to visit Cape Lookout.
I had never been on a sailboat in the ocean before, and it was amazing.
The first half of the sail out was pretty rough. About a third of the passengers were sea sick! Poor things!
John spent the sail out in this:
I thought he was so brave! You couldn't have paid me a million dollars to get into that net, but he loved every minute of it! Every time we would crash down, he would get completely soaked! He's a salty boy and does his sea loving relatives proud. :-)
Here are the boys at the base of Cape Lookout:
Aren't they teen-tiny?
We ended up returning to land through an inlet and under motor rather than sailing back over the open ocean -- I think that it the only way the captain could get the sea sick passengers back on board! The captain said that only 1 out of 25 sails were like that and it was what sailors referred to as, "Good Sailing", LOL.
On the homeschool front, I am itching to get planning for fall. I have had the pile of boxes full of curricula sitting in my living room since I opened them! All of my bookshelves in the school room are packed full and I have nowhere to put any of the new stuff. What to do, what to do......
Category: Miscellaneous
I haven't been on much this week. As you might have read in the news, we have had record rainfall along with flash flooding here in WI. This past Saturday, with 6 inches of rain falling in just a few hours, the sewer backed up in over 200 homes in my area -- including ours. We had just put the boys to bed and were about to start a movie (Saving Private Ryan), when a neighbor mentioned that another neighbor had some water in their basement. I had started a load of laundry about little while before this, and there was no water in the basement then, so I thought we were ok. Just to be sure, I ran down to check. To my astonishment, we had about a 20' diameter pool a few inches deep of "stuff" coming up through our sewer drain! Thank goodness Dave had his commercial wet/dry vacuum at home. It took awhile to get the existing water off of the floor and by midnight we were able to keep pace with the flooding. The vac holds 12 gallons and at one point as fast as he could go outside and dump it, we had another 12 gallons on the floor! It was an exhausting night -- we were up until 5:00 a.m.! But, wonderfully, the sewer caught up at that point, and the water completely receded. Anyway, the aftermath of that is what I've been dealing with all week (clean-up, insurance companies, etc.) Our insurance does cover sewer backups, so we are really lucky & our agent and adjuster have been great. Many people had it much worse than us this past week -- losing their entire homes -- so I'm not complaining!
Category: Miscellaneous
Woo-hoo! We are on Spring Break this week and next week! I really needed it. The endless cold, grey days stuck in the house with three rambunctious boys was driving me crazy! A three martini playdate anyone? (Just kidding. Sort of.)
I have a list a mile long of things I hope to accomplish.
Let's see:
- Bring Quickbooks up to date for our business
- Bring the database up to date for my side business
- Clean, clean, clean!
- Get gardening plans finalized
- Start the first seeds for the garden
- Find out exactly what is needed for the basement root cellar we are planning
- Pick a history program for next year! (Story of the World vol 3? Winter Promise American Story 1? Sonlight 3? Something else out there???)
- Pick a science program for next year!
- Try to get organized for the onslaught of birthdays that begins April 12th
- Relax, LOL
Hee-hee! Quite a different list from the one I had for Spring Break in college. :-)
Category: Miscellaneous
John has been involved in Cub Scouts for the past two years and Noah is so excited that he will finally be able to join in and become a tiger cub this fall!
In addition, we are adding in that other great American activity for boys -- Little League Baseball!
We signed John and Noah up last night for our local team. We were a little nervous at first because most sports teams around here have Sunday games, which would be a disqualifier for us. We were relieved to find out that there are no Sunday games or practices! Noah will play tee ball and John will be on a minor league pitching machine team. We checked out half of the books at the library on baseball and the boys have been devouring them -- yep. We're certified homeschoolers with that one! I think I am as excited as the boys are ... I can't wait to watch them play in their uniforms!
Category: Miscellaneous
"I wonder by my troth, what thou and I did, till we loved?"
Category: Miscellaneous
March
~Elizabeth Stoddard
Ho, wind of March, speed over sea,
From mountains where the snows lie deep
The cruel glaciers threatening creep,
And witness this, my jubilee!
Roar from the surf of boreal isles,
Roar from the hidden, jagged steeps,
Where the destroyer never sleeps;
Ring through the iceberg's Gothic piles!
Voyage through space with your wild train,
Harping its shrillest, searching tone,
Or wailing deep its ancient moan,
And learn how impotent your reign.
Then hover by this garden bed,
With all your wilful power, behold,
Just breaking from the leafy mould,
My little primrose lift its head!
Category: Miscellaneous
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