On spelling mistakes, homeschooling, and blogging...

An alert reader (anonymous, perhaps, because s/he was embarassed to be correcting me) pointed out a typo I made in a post back in September of last year. It was ironic (and embarassing, indeed!) that the post was about our homeschooling children. But I have to admit, though it is a bit of a smudge on my face, I had to laugh about it. You see, grammar and spelling are my main pet peeves. I go through our local newspaper with a red pen and have been known to correct signs hanging on check-out registers in stores. It is Homeric that I let that homonym slip-up slip by! I can't believe my kids missed it! I can't believe my husband didn't call me on it! Any one of them would have been tickled to death to catch Mom in a spelling error! I can't believe I did that; I'm mortified!

Not really.

I'm not perfect, doggone it. The truth is out. And I'm not being sarcastic. Really! Homeschooling Moms are rarely Rhoades Scholars, (Did I spell that right?) and many of us muddle through some of our schooling subjects with fear and trembling. (If you're worried about my English skills, you should see my Algebra!) But we muddle through, working hard to balance our children's knowlege of the arts and sciences with their spiritual growth, their physical health, and their joy of living and learning. All this while keeping up on the laundry, the politics of the world and our own extended families, the cheapest place to buy gas, diapers, and milk. Not to mention blogging.

Why do we DO this? Well, moms, you know it. It's all about love. I love my family, and do my best for them in every single way I can. I know I fall far short, but I'm happy to wear myself out for these people. So much so that I choose a lifestyle that is a leap of Faith, allowing God's full reign in our family. So much so that I choose to homeschool because I know it's best for our family at this time in our lives. So much so that every moment of my life, and every corner of it, has a child in it. So much so that I may skip that extra proofreading of a blog post to make cinnamon toast for one of them, or read one of them a story book, or correct someone's math papers...

So much so that I know, especially with schooltime coming around the bend, I need to spend more of my time caring for the needs of my family, editing and proofreading my life and routine here at home ~ and less time on the computer, worrying that I've let a typo slip by. (Because I do worry over that!)

So, I'm editing my time on AWTY. My plan is for Monday to be my blogging day. Friday I'll try to just post some pictures. And I'll try to zip around and visit the amazing, inspiring and resourceful blogging friends I've made as often as I can. But, knowing I have a tendency to lose all track of time on the internet, I'm having to make rules for myself. I have NO self control when it comes to chocolate and blogging.

Please do pop in and visit. I'd miss you all if you didn't! I'll be here, but I'm just going to try to be a little less of a blabbermouth.

I'll be around on Friday, the first day of August, the month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to show you some pictures of our (almost) finished dining room! (Wait 'til you see it! The boys did an amazing job!)

Here we go in our little yellow rented jeep...

to see...

God

in His Magnificence...

And in His details...

(which are also magnificent)

We got to take all these pics last weekend, driving from Ouray, Colorado, over Campbird Road to Yankee Boy Basin, over Brooklyn Pass, over Owl Creek Pass, past Silverton and Durango to Mesa Verde National Park, and back to Ouray. (Though the pictures are not necessarily in that order.)

I'm so grateful to my wonderful husband for working things out so we could go. And I thank God for the art gallery He set up for us to take pictures of. It was the perfect trip, You Guys!

...I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~ Robert Frost

Simple Woman's Daybook, July 28th

Peggy at Simple Woman hosts this lovely excuse for visiting kindred spirits. Run over there to catch up on a cornucopia of Monday morning thoughts!

Outside my Window.... It's sunny and bright. The welcome rain of the last few days has given new life to everything ~ including the weeds which need to be mowed!

I am thinking... life is good! I'm feeling refreshed and invigorated after a weekend in the mountains with the love of my life.

From the kitchen... The kids had a cook-off here over the weekend while we were gone ~ so there's plenty of fudge and brownies to nibble on.. OH, LUCKY ME! (I was supposed to start a diet today...) And Dominic is trying to resurrect a failed batch of peanut butter fudge. He just melted it back down and is adding flour and I-don't-know-what-else to it to make I-don't-know-what. It should be interesting.

I am creating... a paint technique for our new dining room walls trying to subtley mimic the tortoise shell lampshade on our piano light... Wish me luck!


I am going... for a visit to Mother Cabrini Shrine and then a hike up St. Mary's Glacier this week with my big boys ~ something fun to do together before they go back to school in a couple of weeks.

I am wearing... chocolate brown gypsy skirt, cream colored tee, old brown sandals


I am reading... Ida: a Labor of Love ~ a true story about the life of a pioneer woman, a mother of eight children, in the mining camps of Colorado in the late 1800s.

I am hoping... to get a chance today to download some pictures of our weekend in the mountains.


I am hearing... Jon swatting flies, Anna and Cathy chatting as they clean off the lunch dishes, Dominic picking a tune out on our new old piano (hopefully pictures coming of that, too!)


Around the house... Catching up on a ton of laundry ~ as usual for a Monday. Finishing up the trim on our rebuilt dining room. Working on trying to keep our two little escape-artist baby goats in their pen and out of the house. (They desperately want to live in the house with us, and squeeze out of their pen and in through the door every chance they get. As cute as they are, none of us thinks they'd make good house pets.)

Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week... Work at grandparents' house, work at church, work at home, hiking in the mountains whenever we can squeeze it in.


Here is a picture thought I'm sharing with you...

Twin Falls at Yankee Boy Basin, at the top of a fairly easy jeep trail southwest of Ouray, Colorado. These are the falls that are on the Coors cans...
And here are two videos ~ a close up and a wide view. I wish you could all have been there, as the pictures and videos just can't do it justice. For the real effect, to these pictures add 1) a breeze, so cool and fresh if feels like it just blew in from heaven; 2) the sweet aroma of wild flowers blended into the subtle earthy background of sage and pine; 3) colors so crisp and clear and bright, they can't be reproduced in a camera.

Progress Report

Still meeting ourselves coming around corners, if you know what I mean... It's hard to get on the computer to do much blogging. When I do, it's stolen time. Still, I feel bad for not having the chance to visit in the combox, lately. And I've not had the chance to do much surfing around, outside of my very closest blog buddies. Such a bummer, as this is cherished relaxation/re-energizing time for me! I didn't think I'd say this when summer began... July is not even over yet! But ~ I can't wait for school to start again! I need the rest, doggonit!

(OK, that's out of my system for the time being...)

Back to our scheduled programming. Here's what we're up to right at the moment:

We're not quite finished with our dining room yet... All the sheetrock is up, though ~ walls and ceiling. The painting is just about done, the trim all in place. We just have a bit of finishing work to get through, as well as outlet and switch covers and a new light to choose and install. I promise to post some pictures of the finished product really soon ~ but we had to stall further progress for a couple days this week, in order to help out at church. Our parish is in the process of finishing our new church building and preparing it for the big dedication ceremony in about two weeks. And since my husband...

( Hey, ya know... I hate calling him that ~ "my husband" ~ though that seems to have been the pattern I've stuck myself with... But it seems so stuffy! I think I'll henceforth just call him "Dad." That's generally what he goes by, anyway! But I digress...)

I was saying that since my husband ~ oh, I mean Dad ~ has the week off, we've decided to tackle some church projects before we finish up our home projects. Many, many skilled hands have tackled an amazing amount of work to prepare a fitting place for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Since we don't have the finer technical skills many of our friends do, we thought it best to volunteer for some good grunt work. And that is how we got to paint the dreaded "green room."

You see, there's this particularly large room with a piano in it... And, of course, the piano made it inevitable; we've adopted it as our very own bouncing baby rec room and dedicated it to St. John Bosco. It's going to be tons of fun outfitting it as time goes by with dart boards and games, etc. Unfortunately, though, at some time in its history, some creative spirit painted this room a uniquely noxious shade of leafish green ~ walls and ceiling. Agh! There's no question that before we can get creative in any other way, we have to make the green disappear.

Below are some shots of our room being transformed to white by Jon, Dominic and Michelle. They're getting to be quite the construction/painting/all 'round handy-people work crew! In spite of being so goofy in the process. (Yes, kids, you're pretty durn goofy.) We think Don Bosco must have been looking on well-pleased.

I was downstairs most of the day working on other projects, but I could hear how the children progressed by how how often they paused to play the piano and goof around. As long as their little "recesses" re-energized them, there was no reason to say anything, though sometimes I wondered how anything was getting done at all. At one point, while I chatted with a friend in the vestibule, we heard them sneak into the choir loft to play around with the acoustics. Here's what I captured:

When I came home tonight and downloaded this, they said: "Don't play that! It's awful! Oh, Mom!" But, I say they're being too persnickety. God gave them the wonderful church with a great choir loft and gave them the gift to sing in it, so they should share it, right? Aren't the acoustics great in there? I love hearing them sing together. (You have to encourage them here for me, so I can justify having posted it in spite of their whining. &:o)

To really understand our family, you have to know...

...we are HUGE Olly and Stanley fans around here. We are actually big movie fans, in general, and have a particular soft spot for many of the classics ~ and highly regard a long list of classic actors. But, Laurel and Hardy... Well, the boys have a particularly high place of honor in our family heart. For starters, my uncle was pen pals with Stan Laurel until Stan's death in 1965, so we feel we have a kind of family link with them. But, even without that, their brand of humor is the greatest entertainment value on the block to us.

We've watched our vhs marathon tapes so many times, they're wearing out. We have almost every one of the boys' skits and movies memorized. We know which short is coming on before the first couple of seconds have aired. Their dialogue has become inextricably enmeshed in our daily conversation. ("You snake in the grass!" "You toad in the hole!") We value their slapstick routines and pecadillos as the highest of art forms. We just love those guys!

And so you can only imagine the glee that met this creative sync we found on the net this afternoon...

OH! OH! Hurry up to get in on this one!

Today marks the day to begin a novena to a dear heavenly friend. I think I will be praying this simple one just because we have been so incredibly busy lately and I don't want to miss a day for want of time. Under usual circumstances I would probably pray this very beautiful one.

St. Anne's feast day is a week from Saturday, July 26th! We have a special friendship with this wonderful saint, the mother of Mary, the grandmother of Christ. Our fourth daughter is named for her; we consider her influence to have been great toward the ten successful deliveries of our babies. We have never called on her without answer. And her answers have been singularly poignant and sometimes full of humor. We think she must have been a woman of much spirit and mirth. It's a special blessing to get to know the personalities of the saints by speaking with them as the caring friends they are. I'll try to post about our signal graces from St. Anne next week on her feast day!

H/T: Rosemary B. (Hi, sweety!)

How Coloradans Spend Their Weekends...

Well, not all of them... But quite a few get out and about!

The off road biking types do this:
Helmet Cam at Crested Butte.

In Fruita at the Book Cliffs

The winter sports folks do a lot of this.

The ones who like to risk their necks do this .

My husband and I like to do this.
(Some of the roads-less-traveled we hope to see by jeep next Friday ~ as a late celebration of our 21st anniversary...)

Gopher Broke

In honor of the harvesters that are currently barreling down our country road every twenty minutes at 70 mph, laden with tons and tons of Colorado winter wheat, and because Yuyum and Gabey love it when I post anything from you tube...

Name the Mystery Men

a) Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton

b) Hoops and Yoyo

c) Olly and Stanley

d) Two of the world's nicest and hardest-working sons

Parenting Rule #1: Never turn your back on the kids!

"Out, out, dang spot!"

Our house is where stains go to die. Especially after recent renovations, we've needed all the help we can get. Unfortunately, there's no easy trick for getting sheetrock dust out of every nook and cranny of the entire house, but here are a few tried and true methods for removing other kinds of spots and unwanted gook.

To remove oil, grease, butter, and sunscreen spots from clothing: Rub in some Dawn dish soap before tossing in the washing macine. For extra stubborn spots, soak the spotty section overnight in a concentrated solution of Dawn and water before washing.

To remove gum from a shoe: put shoe in plastic grocery bag, push bag into gum until it sticks. Place shoe, within bag, into the freezer for a couple hours. When you remove from the freezer, the plastic bag should pull away from the shoe, bringing the gum with it. A squirt of WD-40 has also been known to do the trick.

Gum on clothes or carpets ~ Don't use WD40! But, do employ the same "frozen" philosphy as used to remove gum from shoes. Take a piece of ice in a baggie and "freeze" the gum on the fabric or carpet. Scrape up with a butter knife. To remove excess gook that doesn't come up, simple dish soap and water with scrubbed with a toothbrush usually does the trick.

Gum in hair ~ Yep, you knew it. Peanut butter really does work!

To remove old Contact Paper from shelves: Wet a thin dishtowel, place over paper, press with steam iron. Pull up towel and the paper will peel right off.

To remove candle wax: Easy peasy. Freeze the holders for a day or two. Tap or shake lightly. The wax will pop right out.

This little trick deals with a different kind of removal, but a useful one at a Sunday morning brunch for the gang. To remove frozen bacon from its neighboring frozen bacon: Start out not freezing them together. Pull out a sheet of plastic wrap about a foot long. Place bacon on the plastic wrap, 1/2" to 1" apart. Place another sheet on top and repeat layers with all your bacon. Top with one last sheet of plastic wrap and roll it up. Wrap it all in aluminum foil and place in your freezer. Now when you want bacon, it's easy to remove the exact number of slices needed. (When does our group not go through a whole package at a time, you ask? Good question. It's that portion of a second package that's the one needing to be pre-separated for us. And, even when you use the whole package, being able to separate it more easily straight out of the freezer is worth the trouble!)

For tons of great tips stop in for a visit at Rocks in My Dryer!

What Famous Work of Art am I?

You Are Best Described By...

Under the Wave Off Kanagawa By Katsushika Hokusai

What Famous Work of Art Are You?

Yeah, this seems fitting...

H/T: Matilda

Simple Woman's Daybook, July 14th

This simply lovely idea originated at Peggy's place The Simple Woman. Run over there to catch up on everyone's Monday morning thoughts!

Outside my Window... Still, warm, and sunny. Looks like it's going to be a scorcher.

I am thinking... It's going to be a long week with my girls (except our youngest daughter, Anna) away at Camp.

From the kitchen... We have a new refrigerator! It's so lovely, we all pet it when we pass by...

I am creating... New walls are still going up in our living room this week, though I'm just a bystander to the real work being done. I do get to be the deciding vote on choosing paint colors today from the paint chips we picked up on Saturday.

I am going... Grocery shopping to fill up my new fridge (We lost almost all our food when the other one went belly up last week).

I am wearing... A tree-frog-green gypsy skirt and white tee with green and pink flipflops.

I am reading... Not much right now, with our house all heels over bloomers. Sneaking in a little Fr. Brown from the GKC Omnibus when I need a break...

I am hoping... Our little Cathy has a good time on her first trip to Catholic Girls' Camp, and doesn't suffer homesickness. She does have her sisters, Michelle and Theresa, and she knows many of the Sisters who run the camp, and Cathy is a pretty stalwart little soul, too. But she's a bit of a homebody and only seven... (I'm sure she's fine...)

I am hearing... Dumbo in the background and Gabriel complaining that William is "purposely trying to annoy me. And I'm not even looking at him."

Around the house... The sheetrocking in the living room is at a temporary standstill while we wait for an electrician to show up (hopefully today!) to fix the wiring to the overhead light.

One of my favorite things... Four-wheeling with my husband in the beautiful San Juans, with a picnic in the back seat and a camera in my hand. (Can't wait 'til the 24th to get to do this!)

Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week... No plans except to facilitate getting my living room finished and my house put back together.

Here is a picture thought I'm sharing with you...

Anna feeding our two new mini-Nubian kids, Latte and Mocha. Their whole names are Mocha Secunda and Latte Rufina to honor the saints of the day on which we got them. These two will be pets, not milkers. We're trying them out with the girls to test their responsibility and resolve before rehousing the barn with a dairy goat ~ or maybe a cow. The little girls barely remember our dairy operation from before our Western Slope move, so we thought it best to bring everyone slowly up to speed ~ and so far, everyone's enjoying the novelty. We'll see how it goes when it becomes just a chore!

Over the woods and through the river...

Looking for Paul in the Newest Round of OCS Photos

(Paul's girl, Nicole, and I like to keep an eye out for Paul-sightings in the USMC website ~ but, as familiar as his face is to us, it's tough spotting him!)

Could he be in this group of little ~ or, well, more like BIG ~ green men?

Or, well, hmm... Could this be him? (Over the woods...)

How about one of these guys? (Still climbing...)Theoretically, either one of these two could be Paul. (Still heading up...)
Or one of these two? (Almost to the top...)
Or how about this one? (Midair!)

Maybe this is Paul. (Splashing down...)

Or one of these guys? (Through the river...)

This might be him... (Got deep all of a sudden, didn't it?)

That nose kinda looks like Paul's. And he seems to be giving us a sign...

Could this be him?

There's just no tellin'. We're not sure about any of them, but this guy. We know he's not Paul. But we think we've found Waldo... (He can't wear his red and white hat while in uniform, of course.)

Three more weeks until we get Paul back home and can hear the first-hand accounts of Officer Candidate School. This program is reported to be one of the toughest leadership programs in the world and it sounds like our boy is doing very well so far. No surprise to us. If there was ever a born leader, its Paul. He's been in training since day one. (If you don't believe it, just ask all his little brothers and sisters!)