Vanity
Sundays are my day to sleep in. After caring for Spark all night (and he got up three times last night), I get a chance to sleep to my heart’s content, well, at least until 10, when I have to get up and rush to prepare for church. This morning the dog was whining in the hallway outside my bedroom, crying to be with family. My door was open, but he wasn’t coming in to see me. He wanted the children, so after dragging my tired body out of bed, I headed out on the search.
Our bedroom opens into a long hall, with doors on both ends, a very nice place to enclose the puppy. The door to the living area was open. Strange, normally the kids are watching videos at this time on Sunday. Spark and I headed down the hall the other way, and lo and behold, we found the children, giggling, huddled around an electric heater in one of the girl’s rooms. Their reason? “This is the only warm place in the house, mom!”
Besides the fact that they are all wearing summer pj’s, and it’s now full-blown autumn, they do have a legitimate complaint. Remember when we first got here and they were painting my house? Well, I noticed that the walls above the 2 heaters were black, and now that I have a beautiful red on the walls, I refuse to mar them by turning on the heat.
I know I will lose the battle; ultimately the warmth of my family is much more important than non-blackened walls. But for now I will pretend that I am in charge and can make the decision; the day that hubby turns on the heat will be the day I back off my clean-wall campaign. Because without fail, I’ll be a frozen ice block, unable to defends my walls.
More thoughts on Schooling
Everything I am doing lately is pointing to home schooling. I am getting more involved in the spiritual development of my kids, wanting to spend more time in discussing how they can grow in God and using that as my theme during my own Bible study.
They all have Bibles now, and we are looking into character development more deeply. I want to be more of an influence in their lives, providing spiritual guidance and direction. I want to spend time developing areas of their lives that they aren’t getting in school, even though the school they currently attend is Christian.
I want the girls to learn cooking, sewing, crochet/knitting, cross stitch, how to care for a home, plant a garden and tend to it – veggies and flowers.
I want to go camping and hiking with the kids, learn about the nature around us. I want to build the dollhouse with them. I want to teach Andres how to build things with his hands. I want to do the family newsletter.
And all of these things take time, and we have no time with them attending school all day, they are gone nine hours of the day, then they have homework and usually finish right before dinner; sometimes there’s not even time to finish and they have to do it after dinner or the next morning.
I know I can teach school stuff to them; grammar and math, the two most difficult subjects, I do very easily. Geography, history, natural science are all topics that we can learn together as we read books.
Eli could do a comparative study of a historical fiction book, a totally fictitious book of that period in history, and a non-fiction book of that same period.
Emily could read about plants, when to plant them, how to care for them, what to buy, etc. and do a presentation on it.
Andres could build a Lego or Lincoln log building and talk about the process, how he invented the building, what worked, what didn’t, etc.
They could learn biking, roller skating, we could join a club to get them into sports, we could use lesson time to plan for a vacation, doing research into where to go, what to take, how to prepare, what food to purchase and bring with us, what we would need if we go camping vs. staying at a hotel.
I have lots of ideas, and have a desire to do it. It’s more than just an openness to do it, I really want to do it. I will pray about it and ask God to confirm it in me. How? I don’t know. Lately I don’t know how God confirms anything in my life anymore. But I will pray and ask for confirmation. Part of what I have been praying lately is that I will be more submissive to God, and this is an area where usually I would just go ahead and do it, rather than asking for wisdom and guidance.
