All appearances ...

We recently moved back to the United States from Europe. Our Nativity scene is broken as a result of the move. The past week or two, one or another or many of us are contracting a nasty head cold. We don't even have our Advent wreath set up, and here it is in the middle of advent. It's out on the table in its box, I just have to clear off the dining room table that I had all cleared off for Thanksgiving. And where in the world is our Advent calendar? In a drawer in our Catholic room. To all appearances, we look as though we're not even Christian, much less Catholic.

Today some Christians came to our door. I'm not sure what they were trying to do. Maybe they wanted to sell us some Bibles? They asked whether I felt hopeless sometimes when bad things happened. I said, "No." They saw our children and asked us whether we had a children's Bible and tried to interest me in a "Life of Jesus" compendium. I told them I had many children's Bibles. I didn't tell them that we use only three of those many. But that was the end of our conversation. I guess I sounded firm enough in my faith that they figured (correctly) they couldn't sway me.

I guess it interested me that they should come today, on the feast of St. Lucia. We are a day behind (this is a pretty good record for us) and are celebrating the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, but by golly, we are celebrating the Christian year. The kids copied some simple quotations from the Tomie de Paola book we read. We made Juan Diego tilmas out of paper, the kids actually colored their own castillian roses. We made Mexican Hot Chocolate (my own, simplified recipe). We watched Juan Diego, Messenger of Guadalupe and talked about the differences between the book and the movie. And then my kids put on a Merry Christmas Strega Nona puppet show for us. I made the puppets several years back by hand drawing and coloring the three main characters and pasting them onto corrugated cardboard and pasting popsicle sticks onto that. Now they want me to make the Zampognari and townspeople.

I want to thank Elizabeth Foss for directing all this celebrating. My son, the one that challenges me the most, said, "School is fun today!" It brought tears to my eyes. I somehow lost all of my creative juices when I moved to England. I started to rely on workbooks and ~ horror of horrors ~ textbooks! My kids and I became bored and disillusioned. And the school day was just something for me to get through. I lost my vision and my direction. I lost the goals I had first put down on paper so long ago. All this to say that now I need direction as I hadn't before.

I also want to thank the 4reallearning ladies who are not perfect, who say things like: "Are you kidding? You think we are able to do all the stuff we recommend at once?" That tells me I am free to choose what I can do. Yes, odd that I have to be told at all, but this is what has happened to me in the last four years. If I am sick, as I am now, and can't get out of the house, I can choose simpler activities for which we have all the craft materials.

You ladies all outstrip me by far on lapbooks, but I am learning. I am willing to try. I so sincerely want this whole homeschooling experience to be a pleasure for my children and myself. I actually believe my goals are coming back to me as a result of listening in and asking questions on the 4reallearning forum and on all of your wonderful blogs.

MY HOMESCHOOLING GOALS

My husband and I pray for stronger, healthier relationships with our children, for them to love learning, and for them to love their faith. That is the bottom line. If those three things are in order, the rest of our little world will fall into place. Please pray for us as we do for all of you for whatever intentions you have.

It appears I've even lost my ability to write in these past years, because this post bounces around everywhere!