5 Minute thoughts on Morale

What encourages your heart when morale is low?
Do you look to treat yourself with food? With fun? With some other indulgence?
Set about planning a getaway for yourself or your family?
Catalogue what needs to be done to change the situation for the better?
What do you do when so little of this is available?
When the way through is dark and energy to continue on is faltering?

Strengthen your hearts of the coming of the Lord is near

Lift up your eyes to the Lord where our help comes from

Rest remembering that underneath are the everlasting arms

Put your hope in God who daily bears our burdens

Does it seem futile to look beyond life for hope?
Does the thought of heaven only bring restless weariness or bitter hopelessness for the now?
Does it seem weak to seek solace without changing anything?
Is your faith wavering that the Lord's help will actually be useful?
That He sees you and cares enough to be helpful?
That what is to come is more relevant than here and now?

Consider what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later

Remember that we are born again to a living hope to an imperishable inheritance 

Remember you are being guarded with God's power through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 

Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ

As was spoken with great longing in Narnia, so shall it be so when our Lord Jesus, the Lion comes:

    Wrong will be put right, when Aslan comes in sight,

    At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more.

A few Unusuals in our Ordinary this Week

 An unfortunately necessary topic of family conversation after it was discovered that Grace's long-standing health issues growling along in the background actually come from being quite badly constipated!

This tree looks like it couldn't make up it's mind which way to go nor how to get there. We pass this tree often on our runs and walks.

We see these chairs beside the road we walk and run on too. By themselves on a lonely stretch of sidewalk... what would they say if they could talk?  Our best guess is that they are used by the enterprising car trunk sellers who set up shop where ever they can find buyers outdoors and not get fined under lockdown rules.

We found a vertebrae of... something on the beach last time we went. A fair sized creature it must have been! 

And a random piece of created beauty in a not-that-usual medium that happened in our house this week.

                                                  

September Stumblings

So, the first full week of school

Could have been a lot worse

Sad for us it also fit the rule

You need smooth; you get the inverse.

Well planned? Plenty of plan wrinkles

Good nights of sleep? Broken nights instead

Happy and healthy? Mom has shingles

Start on time? Digging kids out of bed

And yet, despite it all gone a little wrong

We got a fair amount accomplished

And even began the days with song

Even if it wasn't so polished

It should smooth out quite quickly

With hopefully even less work for Mom

Interest rekindled, Mom less sickly

Work done apace with greater aplomb.

A tall order we have to fill

With plenty of creativity

French to learn, improving writing skill

Lots of Canada: history and geography

The grand experiment of kid controlled scheduling

"You'll have more time", he said, "during!"

Does show up some benefit fledgling:

A bleach stain now with flowers hedged.

Now there's room for Mom to turn

Attention to some other things

Perhaps proper poetry to learn

So off kilter poems won't make you wince!

And an extra bonus - we saw three planets tonight on our evening walk: Venus, Jupiter and Saturn

School Soft Start

 September first we started school - but only a little. We are doing things so differently this year that we needed a few trial days to see if things were going to work. It also gave us a few days to work out of all morning sleep ins and into mornings of school work :)

We've not been eating breakfast over our break, but Mom made some raw flax pancakes with chocolate syrup and eggnog for first day of school. Other than a somewhat lumpy texture in the eggnog, it went over pretty well. The wake times didn't happen very smoothly though, so eating happened in between work...

We've worked our way into school mornings, so hopefully next week of full school will work ok. The new things - like French taught by Mom to all three - went fairly smoothly also, so there is less trepidation about all the newness. 

We have some fun stuff in this year. Things like a Creative Arts course that allows for things like macramé, clay modeling, soap making projects. Or a literature course that basically asks for a 1/2 a year of reading in your preferred genre and then 1/2 a year of writing in that genre.