What's in Your Kitchen?

One of the great things about having kids at home is the wide variety of objects that may show up on your kitchen counter. Here are two that buddied up to my morning cup of coffee.

These Angel Biscuits are made from the best biscuit recipe in the world. The steel object is the best pastry cutter in the world, a gift for my birthday. More about it tomorrow.

This is one of Audrey's latest pets. When we left for Texas, it was the size of a bobby pin. Five days later it was nearly the size of your index finger. Poor John had to add "caterpillars" to his list of animal chores while we were gone: horses, cows, rabbit, cats, dog, chickens and caterpillars. We think he's a pretty good sport, to have not fed the caterpillars to the chickens.

TriCounty Coffee Club

Matt

Merrill

Sam

We call ourselves the TriCounty Homeschool Association, just to sound official. A better name might be the TriCounty Coffe Club--four women who get together for coffee at the local flower shop two or three times a year. Sometimes we talk about what we're doing with our kids in school, but sometimes it is just the only social outing we've had in a while, so we chat. Last week we had a picnic. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day. For more photos of the recent picnic, click here and scroll down

Wall Art

My grandmama loved British history. She loved it so much that she painted names and tiny portraits and family trees of all the British royalty on the wall above her bed. As a child, I used to lie on that bed and ponder the wall, intrigued by the abundance of Edwards and Henrys and Charleses, and amazed that an adult was allowed to paint whatever she wanted on her bedroom wall.

My grandmama also loved needlwork. She combined the two loves on a stretch of cloth, upon which she painstakingly stitched a segment of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Grandmama embroidering,
approx. 1970

The original Bayeux Tapestry is so named because it was found, and now hangs in a museum, in Bayeux, Normandy, France. It tells the story of the Norman conquest of 1066 A.D., and was probably embroidered by people who were alive at that time. The original tapestry is 230 feet long, but my stalwart grandmama chose to reproduce a section only about eight feet in length. Her rendition now hangs in a museum of my family's own history, namely my parents' home in central Texas.

A Clever Someone has animated the tale of the Bayeux Tapestry and supplemented the original Latin annotations with English subtitles. Click the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDaB-NNyM8o

Car Talk

Their heads covered, Frank and Joe were hurled to the ground. Resistance was futile. Quickly, their hands and feet were bound. Then they were dragged out of the tent and into some bushes. Footsteps indicated their attackers had left.

Nebraska to Texas is a long day of driving, but action like this makes the miles pass quickly. The girls take turns reading aloud, as first the flooded plains of Kansas, then Oklahoma's rusty red soil, slip behind us. Who says the Hardy Boys series is just for boys? Frank and Joe even entertain a Gaggle of Girls through Fort Worth's five o'clock, bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go freeway. All the action, all the stress, is in the book, leaving none for the ladies enjoying the tale in the car.

If your family has already read enough Hardy Boys, try reading aloud the Little Britches series by Ralph Moody. Guaranteed to keep kids quiet and adults thoughtful through the worst gridlock, longest interstate, widest plain.

Strawberry Thief

Who eats all the strawberry out of a carton of Neapolitan ice cream?

Two Mowers

Here are two mowers on a trailer.




Can you guess which one is John's new mower?

DeTocqueville and the Grocery Store

I love it that the GeorgiaGirl is home this summer. I love it that she sits at my kitchen counter and spills out life through a different set of lenses.

For example, tonight she linked what she sees while she works at the local grocery store to what Frenchman Alexis De Tocqueville observed while studying America in the 1830s.

Despotism may govern without faith, De Tocqueville wrote, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic . . . than in the monarchy . . . it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?

In other words, restraint comes from submission to a higher authority. In tyrannical societies, that restraint is applied by force; in free ones it must come from willing submission to God's principles. When every man becomes his own moral compass, destruction follows.

A grocery store is a parade of people sporting every bent and attitude---those with much restraint as well as those who acknowledge no authority. A place to see principles of democracy in action.

My Very Own Marlboro Man

My dear husband intoduced me to a blog written by a city girl who married a rancher, trading urban comforts for the lucidity of country living. She refers to her husband as Marlboro Man, a tribute to his rugged handsomeness. She writes, she homeschools her four children, she loves photography. At least superficially, I am like that woman. Except that I don't make time to write anymore, not even to my friends, and I don't make time to take pictures, not even of my family. Maybe, now that I'm down to three homeschoolers, it's time to pick up some old batons.