Simple Woman Monday, August 18th

Peggy at The 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.... we finally have a clear, sunny day and after several days of steady rain, the weeds are knee high in the north yard!

I am thinking... we will hear the melodic hum of the lawn mower today...

From the kitchen... I'm steeling myself to break the papertowel habit. The dang things are such an expensive habit, when I know dishrags will do the job just as well! Has anyone else tackled this objective? I may need help with coping techiques while we go through withdrawal...

I am creating... lesson plans and coordinating rides to fall classes for the girls.

I am going... to the open house at the homeschool cooperative program run through the city public schools tonight. They have a program where homeschool children take classes on Fridays with some of the best public school teachers (imagine them loving to teach our homeschoolers!) and complete a week's worth of assigments in their courses during the rest of the week. Michelle (13) will be taking geometry, literature and journalism through this source with several of our Catholic homeschool buddies. This is the first time we've ever tried anything like this, so Michelle is the practice pancake. We'll let you know how we like it...

I am wearing... blue jeans, brown and turquoise tee, brown sandals, my favorite gold earings with the moon and stars on them.

I am reading... Still plugging away at books already started (Ida and my Fr. Brown anthology), but mainly writing my own notebooks full of lists right now.

I am hoping... I can find everything the boys left behind when they left for school Saturday and send it with the traveling priests to Omaha next weekend ~ so I can have it over in one fell swoop and not have to mail things bit by bit as the boys remember things they forgot and text me their requests.

I am hearing... very little since the children are all miraculously still in bed ~ just the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard and the faint sound of the Olympics drifting out from my bedroom. (That has been the background music of our days this past week!)

Around the house... Our old homestead gets real, honest-ta-goodness central heat this week! Welcome to the 21st century little old homestead!

One (or, well, two or three...) of my favorite things... Cocoa and vanilla nondairy in my coffee, evaporated milk and sugar in my English Breakfast tea.

Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week... Compiling school supplies and rounding up books. Setting up Michelle in her new school routine. Calling the piano and French teacher to make sure I have the right days and times for classes. Working on our perennial beds. Watching the plumber install our boiler and radiators.

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




Children playing with the camera on the way home from Mass:









See this little man with his tie?


We hadn't added a tie to Gabe's traditional buttoned-down Sunday attire for a while, until this stripy blue one resurfaced last week. And, though Gabey is always a good boy during Mass, I wish I'd gotten him a tie sooner, because wearing it had the sweetest effect. It turned him into a walking, talking miniature Daddy.


He copied his Dad, gesture for gesture, all during Mass yesterday, striking his breast at the mea culpa, tracing the cross on his forehead, lips, and chest at the Gospel, kneeling in deep contemplation after Holy Communion with his eyes closed and his missal on his forehead... Just like Daddy.


After four long years of going to Mass, Gabe was surely and truly in the groove. It was natural. It was right and proper. He could follow Mass like the big boys. Because, well, ya know. He was sitting next to his Daddy. And yesterday ~ they matched.