my blog to this link...come with me.

We anticipate a cold (about 20 degrees), yet joyful Easter today.  Eggs have been hidden.  Ham is ready to go in the oven.  Fruit salad is made. 

May the joy of Easter last with you for the next 50 days!

Besides focusing on the flowers of the field and their dependance on the Father to help them grow, we have been studying birds again in our family.  They awaken me each day at their joyful surprise of the sun. 

I love collecting birds nests.  I find them in trees and beg my husband to bring them down for me.  It's even caught on with my 7 year old.  She spots them in trees (way beyond my 5ft 2 reach) and encourages me to get them.  Our collection in the school room continues to grow.  We have nests of robins, cardinals, house finches and sparrows to name a few.  We even have one with an abandoned blue robins egg still intact.  I have added a book about spring and a book about the parts of a bird as well as my montessori three part cards for the kids to pratice their identification of birds.

Last week we had a sink or float day at the lake down the street.  We took bark and string and tried to make some things float out like boats.  We had varied success.....we did make a raft out of dried weeds that had great success floating out.  We brought it home to show daddy.  I couldn't find it later in the day until one of the children noticed it in the top of pine tree near the driveway.  Two grackles were building a nest and must have taken interest in the string.  There was the string hanging from the tree with just a bit of the raft left connected to it!

Yesterday my husband was out mowing and brought a bird's scull in.  It seemed so tiny!  I put it in a magnifiying box for the kids to look at.  Here our heavenly Father too was remembered as he counted this bird when it died...  Perhaps it was one we heard singing to us last summer.  I wonder what kind of nests we will find this summer.

A marvelous thing about moving into a house is finding the treasures waiting for you.  Our house origninally built in 1865 is full of interesting wall habits and tidbits.  The yard is always giving us new things as well.  From time to time the rain has washed up bit of old glass, nails, and shapely iron things. 

Today we have been blessed with flowers.  Daffodils, crocus, and tulips are in the waiting stage....just need a few more days of sun.  It makes me think of all the people that have lived here before us.  Someone planted these flowers for another day not thinking that they may never see the beauty that was to come.  I too had planted last fall in hopes that I could reap someday their beauty.....which made me wonder where that verse was in the Bible.  The flowers of the field...they neither labor nor spin but their heavenly father looks over them.   The birds of the air don't worry about where to get their food....Matthew 6.  There it is. 

In high school I was on the speech team and had to memorize this passage of Matthew 6.  It was a dramatic presentation for a contest in Chicago.  It was my first lectio divina I think....without knowing the terminology and without being Catholic......I pondered that passage so many times that I came deeply into my heart, but here I am still pondering it today.  What an amazing heavenly Father we have that had planned our life for us.  All we have to do is rest in it and choose to remain in Him everyday. 

So " seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness,  and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. "

God has blessed us once again. 

Bernadette Lucia decided to make her appearance into the world very early on March 31st.  Big sister Elizabeth was able to attend the birth to support mom and announce the sex of the baby.  It was an intense, but joyful birth. 

It was a very wonderful beginning to Holy week here.   I considered again what joy Mary must have had at the birth of our Lord and too more at how joyful Easter will be as we rejoice in our Savior's ressurection from the dead! 

In the year of our engagment, Steve and I were handed a book called Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanuaken.  It was read aloud (as well as many other books) in those moments we shared together.  It became a stepping point as we reached toward what we hoped our marriage might become.  Van (as Sheldon's friends called him) and Davy (the name he called his wife Jean) created an image of a marriage with a "shining barrier" around it which would protect it from outside forces.  It was also a barrier to keep them connected to each other.  Over the years they found Christ, and wondered if they had shut Him out of their barrier. 

Steve and I liked the imagery and took it for out own.  We wanted to Christ to be inside our Shining Barrier and to keep us united together through the thick and thin of marriage. As we approached our 10th year of marriage, I encouraged Steve to find another copy of Severe Mercy  so that we could re-read it aloud to each other.  And soon after at a used book sale (oh how we love those sales!!!), we found one.  Alas did we really think we could find the time to read it aloud to each other with three children?  We did read quite a bit of it aloud last year, but today I took the chance to finish it myself. 

Oh the tears!  And what a symbol of commitment to marriage.  Van never did remarry, but it was quite amazing to look at the two years after Davy's death and the effect it had on him. 

I wonder how I can continue to develop this deep commitment to my husband...even if death would take us apart.  Davy was willing to give up her life so that her husband would become commited to Christ...and he did eventually find that fullfillment in the Catholic church in 1981.  Steve, like Van, lead me more wholly into the Catholic church and I pray that my effect on his life draws him ever more deeply into the heart of Jesus Christ as well.

So finishing this book today made me wonder, did Van write other things?  I'd like to read them....so off to the library reference desk I call to get them searching for me.  Under the Mercy and Little Lost Marion will soon be coming...

I found this blog yesterday and haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

It has made me look at the stuggles today in a new light.  And given me hope to focus more on finding the good in my children.

As a homeschooling family we are always schooling.  Some days it is learning about math.  Somedays it's learning how to interact with the postmaster when we mail a violin back.  Somedays it's helping a widow next door find some joy.  Somedays it's just helping mom fold and put away the laundry.  But we are ALWAYS learning something. 

For the last 7 months, three other moms and their homeschooling children have converged upon my home from three distant points (40 minutes one direction, 1 hour another direction and 20 minutes from yet another direction).  We have a history co-op that we try to accomplish.  It's based on Story of the World  by Susan Wise Bauer.  We try to cover five chapters a month to complete this in one year.  Each mom takes a month and we do group activities based on what we studied.  It's been a gentle chaos each month as 13 children (and now two more on the day) learn to learn together.  We have the typical sibling troubles from time to time as well as the friendships that turn into battles.  But it has been so fun to host this group.  I enjoy too having the more or less uninterrupted time to once again connect with these moms each month. 

 So here's to another week of schooling or not really schooling, but learning deeply about life and the things that history gives us.  And patiently (but not really patiently) waiting for this baby to arrive.