Autumn, like every season, is taking the slow drive on back roads to get here.

Life really does slow down, here, in Alabama. 

When it is still as hot as it's been, you have to slow down.

 The Lord is constantly teaching me to slow down; not to rush things. To enjoy the small simple things I might miss...

While I realize that a lot of the country is still feeling the dog days of summer, this really is NOT unusual for us in Alabama.

  In whatsoever state I am in... be content. 

I realized years ago that to be discontented with the weather is, in fact, to be discontented with the One who controls the weather.

Ecclesiastes 3:1  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

Why we school year year round

I think I'd like to try and take the next few weeks and hash out our home schooling here. So, y'all will have to bear with me. I like to take time throughout the school year to evaluate what is working for us and what isn't. Is what we are learning in-line with our family's goals? Is what we are doing in-line with the Bible?

 I know many of my fellow home schooling friends have already started and some of them will start in September.

But, us? We never stopped. <Gasp.>

My children never got a summer break.

They never went on a family vacation.

They didn't sleep in.

They didn't veg out all day.

They didn't whine about being bored, either.

They won't forget what they have learned.

They also won't have to adjust to a new daytime routine.

And they never wondered why they have to do school while other kids are not.

You see, we've always done school "year round" though, I never set out intentionally wanting to do school this way, it just always happened that way. But, up until this year, I always felt pressured to get done by June 1st, even though it made us miserable. I was trying to fit my family, our lifestyle, our learning style, and our family dynamic into what other people were doing, and it never worked. By the time June would roll around, I was getting anxious to be done because everybody else was done. I was exacerbated. I was cross with the children. And I felt like we didn't live up to everybody else's expectations.

Then it dawned on me.

We are not everybody else.

We don't have the same lifestyle as everybody else. We don't have the same learning style as everybody else. And we don't have the same family dynamic as everybody else.

So, I reevaluated my goals for our home education. And realized that the way I was trying to school the children was not in line with our goals. And it certainly didn't fit in line with our family dynamic.

During the typical school year, we take a fair amount of time off, just not all at once. My husband makes his own schedule and is gone away from home most of the week, so if he is home, we are busy spending time with him. The children don't want to school on those days, and to be honest, neither do I. The days when he is home are often spent on projects around the house, running errands, or family outings and trips. Now, that is not to say that we aren't learning on those days; we certainly are for most of them. But the learning takes place outside of our school books.

So, for instance, when one of my boys built a raised bed for our garden, he is used math, geometry, problem solving, and learned how to safely operate power tools. And the amount of confidence and sense accomplishment he gained was priceless. That, my dear friends, is a day of education more valuable than anything learned in a textbook. And it counts as day of schooling towards our 180 days that my state requires.

However, even though the children are being educated outside of their school books, I still want to finish our books. So, in order for us to make it through our books, we have to school year round. But where is it written that the books have to be finished by June 1st? And where is it written that their books must be started on some arbitrary date in August? You're not going to find that rule, anywhere. In the state of Alabama, we must do 180 days of school. Our state's law doesn't state that the child's education must be done Monday through Friday or even what constitutes a day of learning. Our state's law is very flexible, and for that I am thankful.

And I'm thankful that I have finally stopped trying to do things that weren't working for my family.

2 Corinthians 3:17 ...and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

.

Living history. Education outside of our text books.

Living history. Artillery demonstration.

Living history. Confederates in camp.

Living history. Artillery discussion.

Living history. Calvary demostration.

Toad with a Leusistic abnormality.

Causes a pie-bald appearance in some animals.

Zoology.

Hand picking squash vine borer eggs with the children.
Biology. Ecology.

The first yeller squash.

Helping to put up corn.

Food preservation and home economy.

Purslane. Excellent source of vitamin A and C.

Great for use in salves for insect bites and stings.

Herbology.

Raised garden beds. The children helped assemble these, fill these, and plant these.

Math. Geometry. Botany. Physical education. Team work.

P.S. Over the next few weeks, I'd like to share a bit more with y'all about our goals for home educating the children, what books we use and why, and maybe even what a typical school day looks like for us. But it will have to be as time allows. My most important priority is serving the Lord by serving my family and I must redeem the time because the days are evil.

Homemade Christmas: Cinnamon Ornaments

In my last post I mentioned homemade cinnamon dough ornaments. These are so easy and only require 2 ingredients you probably already have in your pantry, applesauce and cinnamon. The children and I make these every year. They are really very simple and smell amazing. When I make up the dough, I usually triple it so everyone has enough dough to work with.

The recipe is:

1 cup applesauce

1 1/2 cup of cinnamon

To get started, preheat your oven to 200 and line a backing sheet with parchment paper.

Next, measure out your applesauce and cinnamon in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix with the paddle attachment until the dough comes together into a ball, adding more applesauce or cinnamon as needed. the dough will be thick, but you don't want it sticky or crumbling apart. You can also mix by hand.

After the dough has come together, sprinkle some cinnamon on your working surface and rolling pin. Roll out your dough to 1/4 inch thick.

Cut out your dough with cookie cutters.

It is also pretty to roll the impression of leaves or evergreens needles into your dough before cutting out.

Next, take a skewer and make a hole at the top and place them on your baking sheet.

Bake in your oven for 1 1/2 - 2 hours until the ornaments are dry and hard.

Tie string through the holes and hang them on your tree.

These also make very sweet gift tags or decorations for your Christmas gifts.

I must say that even though these are made with edible ingredients and smell good enough to eat, they are in fact not edible.

Slowing down this Christmas... How our family creates a meaningful Christmas

Christmas has always been a special time for us, though in the past, the season often seemed rushed and meaningless...

I struggled with guilt for not accomplishing enough on the 'to-do' list. Every other obligation seemed to rise above the things that were most important to me... I was deeply bothered by the commercialism, selfishness, covetousness, and lack of meaning surrounding this season.

homemade beeswax candles make a simple and beautiful table center piece

But last Christmas my husband and I made the decision to be intentional about what we do and how we spend our time. My focus turned to creating memories with the children instead of feeding their natural tendencies toward selfishness and covetousness.

jelly jar beeswax candle, bakers twine, pine cone, and an old pewter platter

So, every week I try to do at least one thing with the children to make memories and traditions. This time usually involves a crafting or baking project. But it is always something special, always something out of the normal, and always done as a family.

little hands exploring a homemade Christmas ornament

Some things we are doing and enjoying this Christmas season are

 hot chocolate from scratch, with homemade whipped cream and peppermint sticks

making cinnamon dough ornaments

decorating the Christmas tree

reading of the first Advent from the bible

baking cookies and listening to traditional Christmas music

driving around looking at Christmas lights

eating way too many cinnamon rolls

making wooden clothespin ornaments

dried oranges and cinnamon dough ornaments adorn our simple little Christmas tree

I hope you are able to slow down this Christmas season, take the time to be more intentional, and make this season meaningful.

ps look for a post soon with a recipe for cinnamon dough ornaments.

Cultivating Home

As the seasons meander one into the other, as summer greens fade into to autumn's reds and oranges,

time slows down in our home. The garden's production has slowed and so has our pace. Quiet reflecting often happens tucked in between moments of fall baking and home schooling...

This season is where I like to catch up on various home duties like cleaning closets and organizing them, dusting cobwebs, washing down the walls, scrubbing base boards... you get the idea. The kitchen also beckons me back with slow, simmering soups, and comforting baked treats. Also, bread baking begins again in earnest. With all of the duties of home, I find that I enjoy cultivating this lifestyle within my home; I love cultivating home.

So, what is cultivating home? For me it is creating an atmosphere of love, joy, peace, and contentment within my home, with Jesus Christ at the center of everything we do.

Cultivating home is bringing my children along side me in the kitchen as I cook from scratch, as I make beeswax candles, as we tidy the house, together. Its eating supper nightly around the dining room table by the glow of homemade candles. Cultivating home is sitting down in the evening for family Bible time and scripture memory, with the reward of getting to pick the next hymn we sing that evening for verses memorized.

It is the comfort my children have seeing the love their mother and father have for each other and the Lord. Cultivating home is enjoying time together as a family. It is the children working and learning beside their parents, the ones who God gave to teach, train, nourish, admonish, and nurture them.

What are some ways you cultivate home? I'd love to glean wisdom from y'all!

 

Camping

Here are some pictures of a recent camping trip our family took.

I hope you enjoy them

the small lake behind our campsite

golden hour the evening we arrived

roast with carrots and fried tators and onions

stillness of the lake

old covered bridge, used to cross the river

view of the lake from on top of the ridge

hiking through the woods

the indian baths

a natural spring

so quiet...

We really enjoyed the time we got to spend together. We camped in our 12 person cabin tent. I was thankful that our site had running water; it made cooking and washing up so much easier. All of our meals were cooked over an open fire and they tasted so good. For breakfast, we had pancakes one morning and eggs and fried bologna another. Lunches were simple; we ate sandwiches. For supper, we had hot dogs and hamburgers our first night, and roast with fried potatoes the following night.

We fished and swam, hiked and explored, and cooled ourselves in the natural springs. The children brought me wild flower bouquets every day; there was never a shortage of flowers to look at. I'm glad I thought to bring something to hold all the flowers.

 I was blessed to be able to see the confidence my children have. I wish I had that kind of confidence when I was their age.

Spring happenings...

 I know it has been a long time since my last post...

And I am really sorry about that.

But sometimes life happens...

Like when the Lord  decides to add another arrow to my husband's quiver. Towards the end of last year, we welcomed our 6th child. Another girl. She was born at home. Unassisted.

Now that that's out of the way...

We were able to get half of our garden planted last weekend.

This is half the garden. 2 rows of popcorn, 1 row of okra, 4 mounds of butternut squash, 2 mounds of spaghetti squash, and 6 tomatoes.

And then the weather dropped.

Bummer. I did heavily mulch the rows and mounds and covered it all with tarps to help trap the heat.

Hopefully the cold temps didn't affect the  germination of  our seeds. We will have to wait and see...

The pumpkin farmer has decided to not plant any pumpkins this year. Last year he planted them and had them running up a trellis. That was our second time growing pumpkins that way, and I don't think we will do it again. You see, here in the deep South, we have these horrible things called squash vine borers. And year after year they have destroyed our pumpkins and summer squashes. When a SVB gets into your squash vines, they kill it. If that squash is growing along the ground, the plant has the ability to put down new roots. That doesn't happen if your squash are growing up a trellis. If a SVB gets in, your plant is shot.

So, what is in our garden this year...

Strawberry popcorn
Star of David Okra
Butternut squash, which is resistant to SVB, annnd tastes like pumpkin
Spaghetti squash
Tomatoes  (I forgot which variety)

And still left to plant...
Kentucky Wonder pole beans
Christmas Lima beans
Pickling cucumbers  (again, I forgot which variety)
And herbs such as basil, thyme, cilantro, lavender, peppermint.

We have rosemary, bee balm and lemon balm left from last year.

I am also going to have a bigger flower garden this year.

And maybe a medicinal garden, as well.

 We're also trying our hand at growing figs in containers. We'll see how that goes...

This is a Texas Everbearing fig

 

We still have so much to do. I've got to get the marigolds in and get the rest of the vegetables sown. And mulch. And finish tripod trellis for the beans.

Good times...