Wild Turkeys

This time of year, the wild turkeys graze in our yard daily.  Living in the middle of the woods means we get to enjoy a great deal of wildlife by simply looking out of our windows.  

New Years 2021

On New Years Eve, Dwayne decided to make a cake. He used the same recipe that was used in our wedding cake almost twenty years ago.  We played Scotland Yard, a game that he grew up playing.  On New Years Day, we had friends over and shared a simple meal of deli sandwiches and delectable desserts. We just enjoyed a few days filled with delightful leisure making the holiday very restful and celebratory at the same time.  

Asimov

Norah's reading Foundations.  She recently read Dune. She's always rereading Sanderson and Poe and Wells and Shakespeare and Esolen and so many others. Many of the books she reads were assigned as part of her homeschooling, originally. But many books, like Asimov's Foundations, she has come to as avid readers do via other books or conversations with other readers. It has been heartwarming and rewarding to watch her go from book to book to book through her childhood and now into her young adulthood. 

Friendship

 

I pray for my daughters' friends. (I also guard their lives diligently and quite unapologetically.) I am grateful for the friends God has provided to my daughters. Interestingly, their friends' mothers are also the friends God has provided for me.  With friends, my daughters will translate Cicero, play chase, talk about books, share books, celebrate each other's gifts, and spur each other on in various good works. (And it isn't so different with the grown ups.) Iron sharpens iron at any age.  Seen in the pictures above are the gifts my oldest daughter gave/ received from her precious co-op classmate.  

Reusing Giftbags

 

I save a lot of money and time by reusing gift bags, tissue paper, ribbons, etc. from birthdays and holidays. Sometimes I still need to purchase gift wrapping supplies like tissue paper. But most often, I can go months, even years, simply using what I have saved.  Over the years, our gifts have actually tended to look better and better, since we have more and more gift wrapping supplies on hand to use to adorn the gifts we give.  Most of the time the only things I have to buy are the gifts themselves.  But to be successful at saving wrapping supplies, you have to store them almost immediately and in such a way that they look as new as the day you received them. In order to ensure the supplies don't get damaged or wrinkled while in storage, I use a selection of shallow boxes that I have collected over the years to keep the items neat. And I keep all the gift wrapping materials together in a hall closet, so I can use them throughout the year.   

Books I Read in 2020

Books I read for the first time in 2020:

The Roar on the Other Side

Apologia's Chemistry

The Patriot's History of the United States

Listening for Heaven's Sake

Peacemaking

Something They Will Not Forget

Jayber Crow

The Rector of Justin

Anna Karenina

Gawdy Night

Brave New World

Passing

Rebecca

Dante's Paradise

Homer's The Iliad

Books I reread in 2020:

The Office of Assertion

The Question

Northanger Abbey

Frankenstein

Hamlet

Phaedrus

The Horse and His Boy

Macbeth

Much Ado About Nothing

Julius Caesar

Norms and Nobility

Robinson Crusoe

The Scarlet Letter

Jane Eyre

Persuasion

A Tale of Two Cities

Amos Fortune

Up From Slavery

Books I read portions of in 2020:

A Beginner's Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Paradise Lost

Caesar's Conquest of Gaul

Miniatures and Morals

On Reading Well

Till We Have Faces

Books I started in 2020 and I am still currently reading:

The Brightest Heaven of Invention

The Consequences of Ideas

The Fellowship of the Ring

Phantasties

The Brother's Karamazov

How to Read Literature Like a Professor

How to Read a Book 

Rythmn of War 

A Mathematician's Lament