I've been reading "Meet You at the Top" by Zig Ziglar to my kids, and I decided to put his goal setting into practice. This is a set of stairs that go up a bluff in my town.

 Actually they start here.....

 I am running up them every day. That is my goal. I have done it almost every day for two weeks. Of course I am gasping about half way up. I have to stop, catch my breath and carry on.

This is my reward at the top...

When I took these pictures a woman asked me about it and I told her I was documenting my goals. She said she knows people who run up and down them ten times a day. Crushed...

Well, the Christmas tree is finally down, the eggnog has dried up and I think we got the last pine needle swept away. It's time to settle in and get down the good ol' routine of school work and more school work. I have to admit, I like the predictable quiet routine of winter and early spring. Quiet, predictable... and not a whole lot of interruptions so I can really focus and feel like we are making progress.

I'm still working on the basics a lot with the boys. Math, Reading, etc. We do a lot of reading aloud too. They like to get out their Legos and listen. That's always nice. Right now we're reading "The Golden Goblet" I read it to my older kids when they were young and it's an old favorite. I'm really liking "The Story of the Ancient World" that I am also reading to them. It ties in Old Testament History with other things that were happening in the region at the time. The boys have had a lot of these stories read to them several times so it's kind of a review with a few new things thrown in, but I heard once somewhere about the "Law of the 17th Mention" and so I figure this is their 17th mention. They should be pretty solid on at least the main Old Testament stories after this.

The older kids have a few changes that should prove interesting. Forrest has been really pursuing art lately and we are enrolling him in a Christian art school next term. I'm hoping he can come home and teach me stuff. :) It is only one day a week though. He is really looking forward to spending one whole a day a week just drawing and focusing on art! He is also learning landscaping and working for his Uncle. I'm thinking he could make his "bread and butter" living on landscaping and then work on art in the evenings. I'm excited for the doors I see opening to him. He's been working so diligently.

Elisa, too, is looking at some new adventures. She has decided to join Rainmakers, a Christian speech club. I am really excited about this! I took my older two kids to a competition a couple years ago for this group and it was very impressive. I also hoped one of my kids would get interested but Shayleen just didn't want to and Forrest is always so busy. Now Elisa is getting older and she's shown an interest and I'm just so thrilled. I know she will be challenged, but I also think she will have a really great time. The kids who are involved all seem to really love it and they talk about the wonderful friends they have made through the groups. I hope she will make some really sweet, encouraging friends. I think it will be a real blessing for her.

She's also going to take a world history class with one of her good friends and she's saving her money to go to Teen Pact leadership school in the spring. Good thing she's been babysitting a bit. :)

It's really fun to see her blossom and take on these new things. I always kind of hoped at least one of our kids would take an interest in these kinds of things, but Shayleen just isn't all that adventurous and Forrest is just... busy. I'm thinking Elisa will be fun. She's so ready to try new things and meet new people. I hope I get to tag along, at least a little bit.

Well, I guess that's all that's newsworthy around here. I hope the day find you warm and content and basking in the faithfulness of the Lord.

Kerri

new catch up

It's true. I tend to just drop off the face of the earth at times. The muse leaves for a moment, I get out of the habit and next thing we know a month has gone by. It isn't on purpose, truly. And we haven't been eaten by rhinos or anything. It's just life keeps coming and I lose track.

So, what has been going on? Well, Thanksgiving, relatives, Christmas shopping, per usual. We had a really nice Christmas this year. I've come to the realization that I really like hanging out with my family. So far all my kids have become fun interesting people that I like to talk to, each in their own way, and that is something to be greatly thankful for.

Elisa and Shayleen have a bit of news. They have been scouted for a modeling agency and now are being represented by Muse Models here in Portland. They haven't gotten any paying jobs mind you, but the owner of Muse seems to feel pretty confident that they will. No, he hasn't sold us a $2000 photo package. :) They do the pictures for free and they seek out jobs for the girls and they get a cut when the girl gets a job. So I figure they wouldn't waste time on girls they didn't have a reasonable expectation of being able to make a little money with, anyway. There are probably some who would disagree with my allowing them to make a move in this venture. And I realize there are pitfalls everywhere. But, the owner is a married guy, has 4 kids (which by Portland standards is a rather large amount) and he was very understanding about conservative standards. Basically if a girl doesn't want to do lingerie, swimwear, alcohol, cigarettes and (oddly enough) fur there is a form that goes with her profile and she marks those things and they simply won't call her for those jobs. But this agency does catalogs and such so there should be plenty for them to do if they get picked for the jobs. They said Shayleen may be getting a lot of shoe ads because she has small feet and most of the girls they represent don't fit the standard model shoe size. I'm good with that!

Actually, they had been approached a few times before by another agency. The first time we got a card I laughed and threw it away. The second time I looked up a few things, said "I don't know..." and threw it away. There were some things about that particular agency (not Muse) that I wasn't too sure about. But Shay asked if she could just pray about it and if it ever happened again could she please just check into it? Well, it happened two more times after that in one day, so after looking at Muse and googling the owner's name and everything else, I let her go in for a meeting with him. Well, so I guess the rest is history.

I relented also because my kids have always been interested in media oriented subjects. Forrest used to do a lot of stop action animation with Legos when he was younger, now he's drawing a lot of manga, Elisa loves photography and perseveres with her cheap hand me down pocket camera, Shayleen has always loved clothes, clothes design, sewing, costumes... I thought maybe this is an opportunity for them to get a look into that world, develop some of these interests and skills, meet some people, and yeah, make a little money because Shay would sure love to get her little Volvo fixed up!

When my kids were younger I had a much more defensive posture against the culture. But I want my kids to grow up to be culture shapers, culture makers even. I want to be careful with them, but I also don't want them to get the idea that culture is something we fear or withdraw completely from. I want them to have the feeling that God wants them to be challenged, to try new things, to get "out there". It's a fine line, and I hope we are doing the right thing, but we'll take it one day at time and see how it takes shape.

Other than that it's the typical Oregon story of neverending rain, grey skies, puddles, dripping trees,(though today the sun is out a bit, I should step out for some vitamin D)...

I've been thinking about moving my blog to a web address that is more in keeping with the title. I'll see if asking Shayleen to do some bogging design for me puts her over the edge...

I hope all is well with everyone else and y'all have a happy New Year. :)

Well, I was saying I had a lot of thoughts about "Radical Homemakers" . The thing is, my thoughts are very conflicting. I decided that I just really never was the target audience for that book and even though on the surface there are a lot of things I may hold in common with the author and the people she highlights, they are just that-surface similarities. But we didn't start at the same starting point and while our point may in some cases may be the same, ultimately if we were to meet at a party our conversation would be all "shop talk" and that's about it.

If you read the book did you get an eerie feeling that you were reading one of those "the case for homeschooling" books/articles from the 90's? It was all there-the industrial revolution, men leaving the home for work, the shift from the home being the center of production to the outer work sphere, all of it. I guess my very initial feeling toward the book was frustration and or annoyance because the author seems to think that she was the first to realize this (or her movement). She mentions the "Stay at Home Mom" sort of stuff coming from the Christian community that came out years ago but dismisses it all as being only in a sort of "women should submit to men" sort of mind set like we weren't interested in community, health, rejecting the materialism of the yuppie lifestyle, neighborhood safety or any of that. No. we were only interested in the whole submission thing. But these modern tomato canning young moms, they got it figured out. So, yeah. A little annoyance there.

I mean, I agree with a ton of the externals. I agree that baking your own bread, not going into debt for a car, canning tomatoes, growing a garden, all of these things when we put effort and love into them are important things. I agree that there has been a shift in our society from the home being the center to career and materialism being our god, really, considering all we do to satisfy it as a nation. Rand does work for some of these people, who pick their one kid up from day care at 7:00pm and dinner is a tray of "lunchables" as he's falling asleep on the couch. It's really sad. I wonder what on earth his happy childhood memories will be? It's a pretty soulless way to live.

But it also reminds me about how during my Grateful Dead days most of the really hard core hippie types were really the rich kids from Long Island and places like that. They lived on mommy and daddy's trust money all the while despising all that mommy and daddy stood for. They were the angriest bunch among us. It almost seems like they are the target audience for this book. Which I suppose serves it's own purpose. Canning tomatoes and having a garden rather than going out to have a career and make a bunch of money probably does seem radical to them. To me it's SURVIVAL. At own point the author (with a serious, straight face I'm sure.) comments that while she can't determine what people's incomes should be, a family would do well on $10,000 a year per person. Well YEAH. I *GUESS*. Honey, if we made $10,000 a year per person we would be making $120,000 a year which I can assure you is NOT happening around here by any stretch of the imagination. So this is radical?

See. I'm not the target audience.

It almost kind of displays the fruit of an age segregated society. The author writes about these things like they are so radical but they are what our grandmothers and great grandmothers did without ever considering it to be radical. It was life. Service to family. Do what needs to be done. Maybe being shut up in school all day with only one's peers is the reason for the whole mindset.

Anyway, it was interesting to look at the way the author thinks, but I don't recommend the book and I hope nobody bought it on my account. I only meant I was reading it, not that I actually recommend it. :) I saw it on a few blogs and picked it up at the library because I was curious. But you'd get more substantial reading material by reading a Ball Canning cook book or for plain ascetic looks at community and family life I really love the intros to Cooks Illustrated  magazine. If Christopher Kimball wasn't such a rocking good cook I'd think he missed his calling as a writer. As it is I grab every Cooks I can find just so I can read his intros.

"The world over, it would appear that life is lived countless miles from where we wish we still were. I know that to be true thanks to modern poets who, when they speak fondly of home, mean some other hallowed ground, either distant or in times past. Here in the mountains life isn't always easy, but we are deeply rooted in the center of things, just a quick step away from where we have always wanted to be and the people that we had hoped to become."

                                                                Cooks July/August 2007

That's the vision of home I want to give my kids. It isn't a movement. It's just love.

The last couple of days I have just not been feeling up to par. Earache, sore throat, wheezy and coughing... I feel like someone been sitting on my chest. Why do I always get sick when the weather changes? And why am I always off guard and surprised when it happens? Blah. I just feel like sitting in my chair and vegging out on movies.

On Sunday I sat and watched "League of Grateful Sons" which I got free from Vision Forum months ago but haven't watched because I knew it would make me cry. Well, it did, but it was really good too, I must admit. In the movie this poster came up

which I thought was rather appropriate for election day. *sigh*.

But I am never one to just sit so I took the opportunity to work on this as well

I tried quilting years ago when we were first married. But I am not an organized, precise person. No matter how carefully I cut out those little squares my corners just never, never did line up. I gave it up for a while but then through reading a few articles in Threads (long lost and forgotten) I decided maybe it didn't matter if the corners didn't line up! Maybe the world could make room for a disorganized free for all quilter like me? I tried out my theory on this quilt for Elisa

No worrying about corners. It was my first attempt at hand appliqué as well, and I embroidered lots of Scripture verses into it. Well, it won't win any prizes at a quilt show for sure, but she loved it. It's about 7 years old now and needs some mending and it doesn't quite completely cover her anymore, but she still keeps it on her bed and I pray the verses are emblazoned on her mind!

Anyway, back to the blue one, I machine pieced it, but I am hand quilting the layers together. I used only scraps from my sewing stash (including the batting which is made of flannel I had around.) I am just randomly quilting circles all over it in different colored embroidery floss. 

Today I will go turn in our ballots, thats for sure. (Praying, praying the whole way.) Dinner-meatloaf, salad and spaghetti squash from the garden with a little spaghetti sauce on it and French bread.

I haven't finished Radical Homemakers. Maybe now I will go and read the rest, while the house is quiet and nobody else is up....

What's up with you?