just another morning here

Finding and worshipping God in the everyday ‘stuff’ of life is sometimes a challenge, but it’s important to me

Measuring Josiah’s room the other day for various things and making mistakes while decorating somehow (well, actually, through a song written based on the verses below) got me on to thinking about the greatness of God and how he doesn’t make mistakes when measuring things …

And then again considering the weather. Not to mention my paltry attempts to grow things – how grateful I am that I trust in a God who is a master gardener, who doesn’t have to wonder why the peas have died, or how tall the sunflower might grow!

Job 38:4-18
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone-
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death ?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.”

All three children have asked to go to school in September. This is what comes of discussing Josiah’s Start Right options together. I have gone so far as ringing the school round the corner to enquire about places and possibly make an appointment to go and see it. It’s serious, this time. Even Abigail, who’s normally the most laid back and ambivalent about the school option out of the three, said (without prompt from Anna) that she’d like to have the opportunity to make more local friends.

And this is where my philosophical ideals clash with the reality of life in the society in which we live. I think I would mainly feel utterly disappointed if they went to school – not that we’d failed in any way because I don’t at all think that we have, not educationally anyway. But they obviously feel that they are missing out on something by not being at school, despite all our efforts to provide all sorts of opportunities for them. I guess the disappointment would be that they weren’t choosing to embrace the freedom that they could have, that not all children have the chance to even experience. Then on the other hand, if they’ve all chosen that route, perhaps that is freedom for them. Then there’s a tiny part of me that would feel relief from the responsibility, although that’s silly, because obviously it would still be ours and theirs, not really the school’s.

Some of the reasons we had for home educating have changed; we have moved house and live near a different school, and the children are now all school age (or will be in September). I feel as though I need some sort of confirmation before making any decisions though, as I’ve said before, the move to home educate was something we clearly felt God leading us into, and I’d really like to have the same foundation to the school decision too. Help!

I offered to man the office again this afternoon, it’s Russ‘s afternoon off, and Steve had volunteered to do some more decorating at home if we swapped around again, which was an offer I couldn’t refuse. [He'd better be doing some, not sitting around in the garden drinking beer with his mates!] But it’s so quiet here! The phone has rung a couple of times, but no customers in sight. Which is almost disappointing, really, as if I am to sell a car on my own I do actually need to (a) be in the office without anyone more experienced here as well, and (b) have a customer, on the phone, on the forecourt, I’m not picky. But I’m not sure it’s going to happen this afternoon There’s still time, I guess!

Josiah had a good morning at Start Right – their topic this week has been Minibeasts so he took our stick insects in for show and tell. The girls both did a bit of music practise before we headed into town to try on bridesmaid’s dresses – my sister had spotted some in a shop that has branches in both places, so we went, we saw, we tried on, we photographed, we rang Aunty Mimi, and we purchased – shoes (reduced to £13 a pair) as well! The girls were over the moon, and have had to be told a number of times that they aren’t allowed to ‘try them on’ any more!

Paid some money in at the bank and picked up sandpaper for wall preparation – today’s job is the undercoat as the walls range from freshly patched plaster, to yellow painted, through to purple painted, all in one tiny bedroom – so we’re doing the job properly for once and undercoating.

Steve picked up Josiah and came home for lunch, and we had a manic ten minutes trying to communicate with one another before I came back to the office – that’s the only downside (or maybe an upside) or all this swapping around, we do have to talk to one another more about life in general, as it’s not enough for only one of us to know what is happening at home/work, if you see what I mean.

It seems that most of Joe’s contemporaries will be leaving Start Right at the end of this term, so Steve and I are leaning towards taking him out as well – we think he has grown out of it, really. It is lovely, it’s been brilliant for him and us, but we think the time has come to stop sending Josiah. I’m reluctant to let go of the stream of graded reading books – having them fed to us each week has really helped us to easily support Joe’s reading. At the same time, he *is* reading well now, and with a bit of careful thought from Steve and I, we could support him just as well with library books, it will just take a bit more effort than we have been putting in until now! Not a bad thing, necessarily! On that note, Merry, we’d love those flying boot books back over the summer please!

We have a busy evening, too. Steve’s mum is taking Anna out to the ballet – she has been re-reading all the Shakespeare stories this week but especially A Midsummer Night’s Dream in preparation. However, because Marg only gets home from work relatively late, one of us [well, Steve] is going to drop Anna to their house later on – meanwhile, the other one of us [that'll be me, then] is cooking dinner for four friends of ours – and I haven’t decided what we’re having yet!! Oops, bit disorganised there!

Tomorrow our Puddles group has the theme ‘Pond Life’ and I’m supposed to be taking carloads of children to pond dip in Steve’s parents’ pond, which was a great idea at the time but sounds like a lot of effort now! I’m sure it will be fun, if a little manic. Then on Saturday I’m working again, so not quite sure when we’re going to have time to sort out costumes or masks for this, which I’m taking Abbie and Josiah to on Sunday! Any creative bods who’ve managed to read this far, I need some help here!

While I’m catching up, must add in what the children got up to yesterday with Steve – they gathered together all our art materials (now cunningly in ‘the Art bag’!) and went down to the woods/river to do sketching together. They came home with a number of sketches each, which they’d obviously worked hard on. We particularly liked Josiah’s ‘river’ picture, as he had used very realistic colours – no blue water in sight, just brown!

On a completely different note, I’ve been exploring some new blogs/sites recently. I think I already mentioned the Taking Children Seriously website, which, while I don’t adhere to TCS particularly myself, I really enjoy reading the articles as they make me think about my parenting. Also on parenting but from a christian point of view, I’ve started reading MumJones, the wife of Tall Skinny Kiwi, who’s been blogging for a while now – fairly inspirational stuff, I find!

My brother and sister-in-law have been posting regularly to their blog (in that first flush of new-blog-honeymoon-period!) and I’ve enjoyed talking to them via the blog, I hope they carry on! Also through that [get ready] I’ve found my sister-in-law’s sister‘s and brother-in-law‘s blogs – have met them irl a couple of times and like them a lot so I’ll be reading those too. Nice to have a few blogs on the roll that are completely unrelated to home education!

Catching up from Sunday as nothing much to report from today!!

Had a yummy continental breakfast then went out to the woods for a walk with Adam and Miriam. It was lovely – just the thing for a sunny day – this particular part of the woods near Killerton is obviously a lesser known spot for being as it was so quiet.

We walked for a while, Josiah led the way which was, erm, interesting! … and we set the kids a treasure hunt, in other words, a few things they had to try and find en route. Anna got bonus points for spotting a baby fieldmouse Felt really nice just to be outside *being* together, with no other agenda.

We ended up down at the stream where we had fun skimming stones. Adam and Steve both did some pretty amazing skims, and the kids tried hard too. They were thrilled to find all sorts of tiny water-living creepy crawlies under stones as well.

Must must must get an Eye Spy Woodland Identification book or something before the next time we go, as I really didn’t know enough about anything! We found a number of animal holes and looked for footprints around but then couldn’t really decide what animals they belonged to … and I am similarly ignorant about trees/leaves/flowers etc.

Got home for a light lunch, I took Anna off to Stagecoach and went for coffee with a friend. Steve said goodbye to Mim and Adam then cleared up before hordes of people invaded for Big Screen Grand Prix and then a film afterwards.

Have to say, Steve is rather getting into this house-husband business, and doing a damn fine job of it. Today I’ve been in the office again and he’s done loads around the house, the shopping, cooked a lovely dinner, washed up, etc etc. We talked this morning about what we wanted to achieve in the house during the week, so that we can both work from the same list – I think we might need to do something similar with educational goals in mind – that is the area I think will get missed if we’re not careful. In some ways it’s nice not to be so tied up in thinking about it all, and to be forced into not being such a control freak about things, but there’s a flip side to that somewhere. Haven’t yet worked it out but it’s something to do with Steve being more likely to do housework and let the kids chill, while I’m more likely to work/play with the kids, think ‘education’ (for want of a better word) and sod the housework. So we do complement one another but the way the children see our different approaches isn’t necessarily helpful! I’d like to get more of a balance there too, as we are working towards with our own work balance. Really writing off the top of my head here, will come back to it later when I’ve had a chance to talk with Steve about it, which won’t be for a while!