The guys in Cloverton are sweet, great musicians and have hearts on fire for God. I bought an extra CD at their concert the other night and I just want to give it away to someone. Songs on the CD are: It’s all for you, Hope inside, Be lifted higher and Turn. And of course, the band signed it for you.

Rules (well, there’s only 1 rule): leave a comment and tell me one thing you’re grateful for.

Yep, that’s it and you’re name is in the hat.

Next week I will put the names into a randomizer (yes, that is a word) and the winner will be contacted by e-mail.

(No one paid me to do this. The CD was bought by me and is my property to give away.)

Bible study is tonight and I’ve been going over the weeks readings to refresh my memory. One that I have a visual image for is: Trust Me to show you what to do when you have finished what you are doing now. I will guide you step by step, as you bend your will to Mine. (Jesus Calling by Sarah Young.)

I see this bending to become something beautiful in a work of living art that is at a park near us. It’s called Weidenblume and willows have been bent and secured and gathered to grow a certain way.

The willows probably don’t want to be bent, they want to grow free and wild, but these particular trees will bend and grow the way the artist wants them to.

In the same way we don’t always want to bend and do God’s will, we want to do what we want, but when we give over and let the Master gardener show us where we need to bend and flow, we become His works of art.

Forgiveness – because I need it and it is a free gift waiting to be accepted.

Psalm 130:3 (The Message)
3-4 If you, God, kept records on wrongdoings, who would stand a chance? As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit, and that’s why you’re worshiped.

Grace – because I don’t get what I deserve, grace takes the brunt for me.

Matthew 11:28 (The Message)
28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Praise – there is no end to verses of praise. These are gifts in hard times when I feel like there is nothing to sing praises about, but there is always something to praise God for.

Psalm 150 (The Message)

Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy house of worship, praise him under the open skies; Praise him for his acts of power, praise him for his magnificent greatness; Praise with a blast on the trumpet, praise by strumming soft strings; Praise him with castanets and dance, praise him with banjo and flute; Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum, praise him with fiddles and mandolin. Let every living, breathing creature praise God! Hallelujah!

The girls and I went to a friend’s house to ride their horse and spend some time together. We got there just as the farrier was finishing up with Murphy’s hooves.

Murphy is a very patient horse.

Bethany didn’t want to ride, so Grace and Hannah took turns riding Murphy, you can tell that he thinks being a riding pony is beneath him, but he did it anyway.

We had lunch and chatted, walked in the gully and then rode Murphy again. As a treat he and Tucker the donkey were let out into the pasture to eat the grass, they were running for the gate when they realized they were going to get out. We said our goodbyes and headed over for a quick EK meeting at Mcd’s, we only stayed about an hour because we had plans in Evergreen for the rest of the afternoon. Our afternoon thunderstorm rolled in and the girls thought I was going to put off the hike, but they should know better. Besides, rain here doesn’t mean rain in the mountains.

Sure enough when we got to Lair O’ the Bear park it was hardly even sprinkling on us.

We hiked by the creek winding through willow brush and coming out by picnic tables and climbing trees.

We crossed to the other side and climbed up some rocks and then went into the woods following the creek again.

We saw lots of flowers and lots of berry bushes with nothing on them (yet.) Grace found some baby helicopter seeds.

We hiked back to the start of the trail and found some good wading water and rocks to sit on.

Some more leaves and flowers along the trail caught my eye.

It was a gorgeous hike, the sun came out right toward the end and warmed up the air, but in the woods it was nice and cool.

The hike made us hungry and I had already scouted out the place we were going to eat dinner at: Cuisine of the Himalayas. The chefs that run it are the brothers of the chef that runs Kathmandu in Nederland (plus Westword gave it a thumbs up, so that’s all I need to know.) Here’s how it compares to Sherpa house in Golden: the chicken momo’s were wonderful (if a bit spicy for the kids, but they are them anyway), Bethany had pizza (which, last time I checked is not Himalayan) and said it was really good, the naan was thinner than Sherpa’s but was good in its own way, the chai tea was delicious and the chicken korma was a tasty blend of curry, coconut and cashew pieces smothering tender bites of chicken. So, if you find yourself hungry and in Evergreen stop by Cuisine of the Himalayas to have an adventure for your palate (1262 Bergen Pkwy, Evergreen, CO.)

And finally, the reason we were up in Evergreen to start with, Cloverton in concert.

Hannah and I sat in the front row, right next to the speakers (what was that? SPEAK UP I CAN’T HEAR YOU RIGHT NOW!) Just kidding. Grace and Bethany sat in the back close to the merch table, I think they were positioning themselves for the signature line.

Anyway, Cloverton rocks, literally. You can visit them here or here and hear some music.

The guys are partnering with World Hope’s 2500 strong campaign and they went to the Hope center in Kenya to film a documentary about World Hope, play soccer with the kids and lead worship in services. WH is working to give hope to the hopeless and not just in 3rd word countries, there is a center going into the inner city of Detroit, MI.

Cloverton led us in worship and wove old music and new into the night, it was beautiful.

I’m going to have a giveaway tomorrow of one of their CD’s, signed by the band. Check it out soon.

Today, Take Me into the Beautiful was more than just a song – it was our whole day.

Back in November, we decided to scale way back on Five in a Row. I scheduled one FIAR book every five weeks, so that in the intervening periods we could devote more time to lab science and history. We’ve done a few good rows since then. But yesterday we picked up the FIAR book I scheduled for this week and realized… we were done.

It’s funny how a curriculum can go from right to not-right. In the past, I’ve seen people complain that the FIAR concept felt weird and disjointed to them. Their children didn’t understand why they were having a lesson on some random detail of a story; they liked the books themselves, but not using the books as a springboard for a unit study. I always thought those people didn’t get it, or they weren’t doing it right. Until Alex turned into one of those kids.

We gave it a night’s rest before making any final decisions. Then today I asked Michael and Alex, separately, what they thought. They agreed that we were done. Alex asked that I still sometimes check out a stack of related library books for her, but she doesn’t want to “do” them as a formal study based on one central story.

This is a really great thing about homeschooling. When something is no longer right, we can just bring it to a close and go on with things that are working well.

So I’ve rewritten my planning calendar and packed the FIAR books away to wait for Colin’s kindergarten year. I try to look at it this way: I haven’t lost a core curriculum, I’ve gained two cubes of bookcase storage.

I have the gift of passion, that can be good and bad. Passion drives me to dance, even though I’m not very good at it. Passion drives me to be married for almost 20 years to my love (I am very good at that.)

I have the gift of cheer; even when I am down I try my hardest to be cheerful and bring a laugh, a smile, a grin to others.

I have the gift of talking. I can talk to others and use my speech to teach, to inform, to help or to hinder. I like talking, sometimes in the morning on a quiet walk I pray out loud to God. (It’s not like He can’t hear me if I think or whisper, but I don’t use telepathy to talk to anyone so I think it’s okay to pray out loud.)

*I also make a wicked dump cake, but I’m not sure that’s a gift.

{May Joy dare list is here}

First, I guess I could follow the advice of Psalms and guard my tongue and mouth to keep trouble from my soul. Second, I could follow the advice to pray for the other person, and pray for myself as well. These two steps could really help me out (assuming I could keep my mouth shut….) Following the advice to pray for the other person reminds me of the May joy dare that I really had to think about – 3 gifts found in difficult people, maybe these are the EGR people in our lives that we gossip about or just don’t know what to do with them.

Hmmm, difficult people cause me to look at myself as in a mirror, I try to see what is making them difficult and then see if I have that same thing in me. It’s not easy to see your own faults, easier to see the faults of others. I guess that trying to fix my own problems is a gift that difficult people give me. Wow, this is really hard. Difficult people give me patience, though I don’t always have enough of it to deal with them. Difficult people make me think – why are they difficult? Maybe they are going through a rough patch at home, maybe they are jealous of someone else’s life, maybe they are lonely, maybe they aren’t actually difficult…maybe it’s just a mask they wear. So, difficult people make me pray and that is definitely a gift.

Prayer is a gift, so I guess people we see as difficult or needing extra grace are really just gifts to make us open our hearts and minds in prayer.

Hmmm….now that’s something to talk about.

I told the girls we’d take Maisy to the dog park after Bethany’s guitar lesson and enjoy the sun that has come back out after being hidden for three days. We’re looking forward to Wednesday, a busy day, but it will be an awesome day of: horseback riding, an EK meeting, hiking and a museum tour, Nepalese food and a concert in Evergreen.

We are once again surrounded by boxes, tape and bubble wrap as we shove everything we own into boxes in preparation for a major move.

This time: back to the beautiful Appalachian mountains of western NC. We leave at the end of the month and after a week or so of travel should be happily settled in to new digs in early June.

Why? Lots of reasons, but mostly to be nearer to family. In these hard economic times none of us can travel as much as we had hoped to and visits with extended family and college kids have grown way too infrequent.  It is a long, expensive trip to come and go from this faraway island, and as much as we love Alaska, we love our family more. So there it is.

We are pretty excited and looking forward to this next adventure. Or, we will be once this unpleasant packing stage is over with. But we have become pros at this and so far this move is one of our smoothest yet. Let’s hope it continues to be so!

Here’s to moving on!

We’re getting a lot accomplished despite our maladies, though.  Alex and I did speech practice on the couch.  I wrote out words for Jack to copy for handwriting and spelling practice.  And so on.

So my plans for the next day or two, sick or not, from the couch or not, are as follows…

• Assemble a list of inspirational people for each child to read about or research. They can decide how they’d like to start logging them, but I’d like to start doing character study as a part of our homeschooling.  There are just too many amazing people in the world whom we all should know about. 
• Find great quotes for Jack to copy for handwriting, spelling and character study (classic Charlotte Mason teaching there).
• Do some readers’ theater scripts on things like how bills are made into laws from the couches.
• Strew lots of books, fiction and not.
• Do poetry exercises with Anna on the couch each day. (Here’s my series of free lessons if you want to join in.)
• Have the kids do math apps on my iPod.
• Watch “Forks Over Knives” as assigned by a great homeschooling mom we know (whose partner was given a prescription to watch it by her surgery after heart surgery!).
• Rest, read, draw, talk, cuddle, laugh.

If you’re sick or on bedrest or that sort of thing, I have other ideas on how to homeschool anyway here.

Now I’m off to take care of Toria and perhaps sneak a bit of danish that made its way into the house.  I promise to chase it with something healthy.