Scribblings from a twenty-year homeschool veteran about homeschooling, life after homeschooling, occasional peeks into the world of writing for children, and the ups and downs of life in general.
It looks like Ryan is going to join the Air Force. That moves up our relocation to our 14- acre homestead by about two years! We'd planned to stay on the West side until Ryan was settled and older (he's only 18), but if the Air Force "adopts" him, then our house will be empty. In the meantime, our oldest son Chad and his wife want to buy our house . . . and soon (to get that $8,000 first-time buyer tax credit), so all of a sudden I'm having to think about moving away much sooner than I planned!
So we had somebody over to officially appraise the house so we can present a fair price to our son. And all of this has to happen around the first of the year! Ryan still has to go to the METS (Military Entrance Testing Site), but after that, he'll know for sure if he's "in" and then will wait until the job he wants and qualifies for comes up--5-6 months. Then *sniff* good-bye Ryan, good-bye Enumclaw, and hello homestead.
The last one out of the gate! Ryan earned his AAS degree in Drafting, finished up his final classes this week. So, in honor of his h.s. and CC graduation, we took him to dinner at the Space Needle. A gorgeous, COLD night, but the view was worth it! Ryan feels led to join the Air Force, and so we pray God can use him there. May he see the power of God in his life through this next "door" in his life. Here are pics of our evening:
Puget Sound and the Olympics in the background
Mt. Rainier and the Seattle skyline in the background
Fancy place, fancy food, fancy price, but worth it. We had a great time!
In my effort to find things to blog about, I decided to dig out this old picture of me. I'm 7 years old and my sister and I were part of the Wilson High School Christmas program in 1960. My dad taught math at the new Tacoma high school and was also senior class adviser. I guess they needed a couple of little kids to be in the manger scene. My sister Alana was an angel and I was Mary. I just had to sit real still in a prayerful pose all during the program, which consisted of a REAL Christmas program with REAL Christmas carols and blatant real meaning of Christmas! It's real scary to see how quickly things have changed.
Two days in a row of blogging. I must be on a roll. I heard (sadly) that Mary's S&T is no more. It was my favorite day of the week not that many months ago. But life and other commitments put blogging on the WAY back burner. (You have no idea what being an author in the 21st century is like. I think I do about 90% marketing (getting the word out) and about 10% writing.
I found this very fun place where you can design ANYTHING to go on T-shirts, buttons, stickers, cards, hats, and so on. It's Zazzle.com
So I played around and made these buttons. What they are good for, I haven't yet figured out. But I might give some away as time goes by. We shall see. Anyway, I thought I'd show the button off:
There's no excuse for my absence from HSB, but a quick "Hi, how are you?" comment from Jenn really got me thinking. How hard is it to say a few words and keep in touch with dear sisters I've met and grown to love the past two years I've been on HSB? Mary's S&T was one of my first "howdies" and I was so clueless! She really helped me feel part of the homeschool blogging group, and from there . . . well, take a look at my friends list . . . I've made some good friends who seem like they've moved away. But really, it's I who has moved away!
I'm on Facebook, but honestly! I didn't even know what it was until a "fan" set up some kind of "group page" over there. I looked at it and said, "O . . K . . . so what's this for?" Then, when my publicist set up a "Fan Page" for me on Facebook, I felt compelled to at least explore what this FB stuff was all about.
Honestly, I do like it, although it's not the same as blogging. But your friends are all in one place and every time you write something they can all see it, rather than surfing and looking for your friends' blogs. But FB lacks the "closeness" that HSB gives, I admit. And I have a hard time coming up with things to say over there.
I thought I'd have a hard time finding things to say for THIS entry, but I guess it's all coming back. I hopefully will even do a Show and Tell tomorrow!
I found this on the internet while researching Dime Novels of the 19th century. Poor "Johnny" has been the subject of many debates the last couple of centuries. [note the date of the article}
WHAT DOES JOHNNY READ? (from The Little Corporal, January 1872, p. 34)
"Oh, every thing," says his father, proudly. "Johnny is a perfect book-worm, and we just have to drive him away from his book."
Sorry to hear it, master Johnny; a live boy has no business to be a book-worm. It is no more a sign of a smart boy to be a great reader than it is of a strong man to be a great eater. One may read too much as well as eat too much, and the brain as well as the stomach be loaded with undigested food that is only an injury to it. It is not what you eat, but what you digest, that makes you strong. It is not the food in your stomach, but the food taken up by the wonderful machinery of your body and made over into blood, and bone, and nerve, and sinew, that keeps up the daily growth of your body and builds you up into a man. And just so the food which you give your mind must be taken up and worked over, and become part of the mind itself, or it is good for nothing. If it has no nutrition in it, nothing to make new thoughts and new ideas, if it can not give something to the mind, or waken something in it, then it is chaff, rubbish, poison, any thing but food. Half a dozen lines of the right sort, read in the right way, are worth volumes of trash, or even of good sense carelessly read and then forgotten.
Do n't throw away your books, Johnny, but learn to go through them as the miner goes through his panful of sand and quartz, watching for the gleam of gold, and carefully picking out the precious bits.
And we should like to say to Johnny's father and mother, do not rest satisfied while your boy "reads every thing." It is a direful day for you if you have neglected to direct and cultivate his taste until he has come to be a mere devourer of the stories of wild, improbable adventure and exciting fiction, which is poured out like a flood for the destruction of our boys; but even yet you can do something to counteract the evil if you are willing to work for it--by taking your child with you into the fields of art, of history, and of science, which may be made as charming to the unfolding mind as the regions of romance.
This year's street fair was really nice! The Salt Shaker bookstore asked me to come on down and sign books, and boy, did they ever give me a "red carpet."
Check out the left sidebar, which has my Circle C Fan Page on Facebook displaying recent posts. I'm pretty sure you can click any of the pictures, etc. and see the fun we had for 2 days. You don't have to be on FACEBOOK to look at my Fan page. Pictures are SO much easier to upload on Facebook
Join Mary for more Show and Tells!
I know I've PRE-posted this a whole week early, but I'm off to a writers conference on Monday and will be in no condition to immediately post something when I come home next Thursday afternoon.
