Vero Beach Visit 2021

We usually get to visit my husband's parents at least once a year. They live in a beautiful home two minute's walk from Vero Beach. When we go, we don't plan big, busy activities in Florida, but we do insist on dragging the girls out of bed to take early morning walks on the beach before breakfast every single day. 

We take a cooler of drinks and snacks and we play on the beach every afternoon. 

We collect shells and sea beans and try to identify them. (Our home in Connecticut is really filling up with them.) We take a lot of books to do a lot of quiet reading. 

And we always visit the book store in Vero at least once for new books, which is always exciting. We play with the dog (and wear him out.) 

We play cards, do puzzles, color in coloring books that Grandma keeps.  Grandma has a bunch of old, charming toys, some of which my husband played with when he was little. 

This year, we took many, many naps. 

It's a leisurely and refreshing time of making memories with Grandparents. Here are some pictures from our visit in July- August this year. 

 

Preparing for the School Year

We're getting ready for the start of our homeschool year. 

Our Classical Conversations community will begin in a little over one week. 

Pro tip for Challenge moms and students:

Put stickers on your texts to help distinguish your student's book from his or her neighbor's book. 

This will help cut down on the number of times kids accidentally take someone else's book home. 

VBS

The girls attended VBS at a local church this week.  

We usually go to our church's VBS or kids' camp, but we were traveling the week our own church offered camp, so we had to miss. 

I was thankful that another church was offering it the week we'd be back. 

I don't think we've missed a single VBS in ten years or more. 

We buy the t-shirts and the CDs and the girls wear the shirts as pajamas and listen to the songs all year into the next and the next and then next.  

VBS is a big deal to me, personally. 

Not to throw my parents under the bus, but they only took me to church sporadically as a small kid. 

But I went to VBS a few times and I remember begging to go back to the church. 

I must have learned enough of the basics from VBS and other activities I did attend, because when I started asking questions about Heaven and Hell as an early teen, I decided to try reading the Bible for myself to see what it said about these matters. I must have know that the Bible was the Word of God and it had answers to that sort of thing. 

Though I didn't understand everything I read, Scripture defintiely made me "wise unto salvation" and I gave my life to the Lord one night in my bed. I had already been forming friendships with Christians and started attending church with them. 

Eventually, I responded to an altar call and gave my life to Jesus publicly and was baptized and by God's grace, I haven't been out of church since. 

So it just feels so right to make sure my girls are in VBS every summer and church every Sunday. 

I can't go back and grow up in church, but my daughters certainly can by God's grace. 

Transitions

Norah has moved all her school books and supplies to the large table-desk in her bedroom just in time to begin her last year of high school, Challenge 4. 

Avril is moving into Norah's empty desk and shelf space in our homeschool classroom just in time to begin her first year of middle school, Challenge A. 

Until now, I haven't allowed anyone to do schoolwork in their rooms. I wanted to keep everyone accountable, on task, and in a convenient location so that I could monitor, help, and guide. 

But Lord willing, Norah will be in college this time next year, so this move to her bedroom feels appropriate, even strategic. She's independent and responsible enough to make the transition to a more remote space to do her work. And soon enough, she'll be working at a table somewhere much farther away than simply up the stairs. 

And Avril needs more space in the classroom to start her Challenge years. 

It really seems only yesterday that we bought this desk for Norah as she started Challenge. They say the days are long but the years are short. It's true. 

A Psalm Upon Returning Home to CT

My soul said to the Lord, "I dwell in a barren land."

The Lord said to my soul, "I know. You dwell in a barren land."

"So I will be to you a stream flowing beneath the your feet. 

Send your roots down deep; your limbs will grow up

thriving in spite of the heat."

My soul said to the Lord, "It is a dangerous..."

The Lord said to my soul, "I know. It is dangerous, indeed."

"I am to you a garden wall surrounding you on all sides.

Your daughters like rose vines are stretching out and blooming all inside 

their arms securely entwined with each other's and with mine." 

As my soul said to the Lord, "I am bereft of liturgy there,"

The Lord said to my soul, "You dwell among a people without living words."

"But I have surrounded you with books, piled tomes in your laps.

'My Word is in your mouth and on your heart so that you may obey it.'

See, here, the same finger that carved the law for Moses

is pointed now at your heart and it burns."

As I said to my soul, "Fear not," the Lord said it, too. 

"Fear not. I am God of every place. 

You are a towering, fruit-laden tree- a marvel there, 

bearing testimony of me to all who see."  

Grace is the Glory

Most modern hero-stories get it so wrong. In them, the hero always has some undiscovered worth and slowly, slowly through trials the hero’s secret glory gets revealed. But that’s not how it really is or ever was. The truth is more like in the fairy tales. Every hero is actually worthless, a slave, a beggar, something equivalent to nothing, but by good fortune, unmerited favor, divine intervention, in a word- grace, the hero finds magic beans or a lamp with a genie inside or a pearl of great price. Grace is how heroes are always ever made. The only reason a hero even has a story is because of grace. Grace is the glory. Christian, do not let the favor or the fortune fool you. Remember. You and I are only the beggars who stumbled blindly on the treasure, which we buried in our desperation, and then sold all to buy the field. 

Summer is for Watercolors

 

Summertime offers more leisure time. There are literally more hours of daylight in summer and we don't have as much schoolwork to complete (though we do keep up with things like reading and piano practice all through the year.)  So we make use of that extra time and sunlight by painting with watercolors in summer. 

This tradition started several years back. For two summers in a row, I hired a friend from church who is also an artist and art teacher to come give us private lessons once a week for several weeks.  I told her what I wanted and asked what she'd charge. I also knew what I could afford and we made a plan and simply stretched the cost of lessons over as many weeks as I could afford. It was a great investment. 

I know many homeschoolers have and do ask me- Why pay for something so simple that could be done for free or for the price of paper and paint? I tell them that I have been homeschooling for a very long time, and for a very long time, I have been learning what does and does not actually work for me. 

I knew from experience how unlikely I would be to stay consistent with anything, even painting with water colors, without some sort of formal support. So I paid for those lessons, knowing I'd be forced to make time to watercolor at least once a week if the tutor was coming for that purpose, etc. I looked at it as a strategic investment in something I wanted to value more... And it worked!

Watercolors have become a summer tradition that we never miss now. We watercolor several times a week from May -August. And how that we are more practiced, we can watercolor without the support of an actual tutor. (But we do often like to follow Let's Make Art online tutorials, since the projects are beautiful and fun.)

Is there something like watercoloring that you want to fit into your life and homeschool that you can use your extra time in summer to invest in and learn to do more often?