First, for the next couple of months, I'll likely have only two to four long posts, as I'm very busy, and I'll just highlight things the best I can, and I won't record things in a day-to-day highlight format. The boys have swimming lessons from June 14 to June 24, and then Jade will continue from the 28th to July 8, Mons.-Thurs. I'll be spending around fifteen minutes a day or so with Trusten to work with him on the Roman alphabet and more with basic counting--language and math skills. During that time Jaden will do his writing. Then I'll sit with Jade as he does his reading lesson and math practice, probably about twenty minutes. He also practices money skills when he buys things, which he does sometimes. I let him count out the money to the clerk. The rest of the regular week days (1st day through 6th day) will go on as usual, learning social skills, science, history, music, art, etc. as things come about, REAL LIFE, as the name of the blog denotes, a lifestyle of learning.
Okay, now for last week's highlights:
*June 6, 2010, Roman calendar: June 3rd was Nathan's and my ten-year marriage anniversary. We went through a lot together in our first ten years of marriage, some really good and some really bad. We've never left each other, even when we felt unloving toward each other. We've kept our promise to each other through better or worse, and we've become stronger for it. I love my husband so much! He's an amazing person. He has his share of faults, but I do mine, too. I hope the next ten years are even better than the last. Anyway, we both agreed it would have been foolish for him to drop things on the 3rd in order to eat a special dinner together or anything. So today the boys stayed with a friend, and we ate together...with Liv. ;-) We're hoping in two years to go somewhere together, just the two of us. Liv is attached to me right now, of course.
*June 7: Jade did a reading lesson, and he started reading a Cul-de Sac Kids book. Trust said he wanted to learn the alphabet. I've not bothered, as it was pointless, as he previously was not paying the least bit of attention, unlike Jade at that age. Jade expressed the desire to stop reading Proverbs, so I told him we'd take a short break. He definitely knows them. He doesn't always live by them, though. We're continuing through the NT scriptures.
Jaden took the binder I compiled years ago on abortion (pictures, statistics, stories, testimonials, types of abortion, etc.) off one of our shelves, and he saw a picture of a fetus clutching a surgeon's gloved finger. The baby's arm was outside of the uterus via a surgical incision. He asked me about it, and I told him that picture actually had a good story and that the surgeon was doing a good thing to help the baby. That baby had spina bifida, I believe. Some women pay a priest of child sacrifice to kill her child, upon learning such a diagnosis. The parents of that child decided to have in-utero surgery. The doctor fixed the baby right up, and the baby was born months later in good condition. So then I talked a little more about surgery and how it can be a good thing, a lifesaving procedure for people. I also briefly mentioned anesthetic drugs and what they did.
Jade tried making an axe while we were outside. I said that our survival guide likely had information on such a thing, so he asked me to get it, and we read about that topic. I then told him that was something he ought to do with his daddy. Ha, ha! At least I know what I need to try to do, if the occasion ever rises. Not so sure my axe would turn out so well, though.
I read a long list of health facts aloud to the boys (as if Trust was really listening--ha, ha) from a book that we got with the rebounder. Very interesting, and Jaden thought some of it was, too.
*June 8: I took the boys to the water park today. They had fun doing that. It was hot outside! During our walk later in the day we investigated and theorized why different fruits are falling prematurely from trees. Some reasons could be: disease epidemics, abundant fruit-producing year so early shedding of some, or lack of pollination that could be caused by lack of bees. All these are very good possibilities, because we are experiencing a huge bee population decline, and the boys and I have seen many trees around here affected by apparent diseases. But, the things that have started fruiting have been fruiting abundantly, so this could be the reason. Some readers may remember that I mentioned last summer a mulberry tree that we have in our front yard. I concluded that it must be a male (because mulberry is a dioecious plant), because it had no fruit last year. This year, however, it's fruiting, so it's obviously a female that just did not put off any fruit last year. Also our dewberries only put off ten or less visible berries last year, and they ripened at a small size and dried and wrinkled before we discovered them. I explained to Jaden that if one year saw a big ruin (like the huge freeze we had in the spring of 2006), the next year tended to produce largely. However, I also wondered whether last year could have been a sabbath year.
We saw some sort of tortoise that day, too, but I can't remember what it looked like. I don't have a picture. We've seen several box tortoises, lately, though, because blackberries and dewberries are fruiting. They love those! The boys ate more dewberries themselves. Jade threw some premature fruits, possibly sproe berries or some sort of plum (not yet id'ed) and called them "cannons." He's so funny.
We saw a rabbit in the road when we got back from our walk, as there are plenty of rabbits out and about at this time of year. So, I started talking about rabbits to Jaden. I explained that the heathens valued the rabbit as a symbol of fertility, as it is well known that rabbits mated a lot and had lots of bunnies. I said that is why "Easter bunnies" in the form of chocolate rabbits and such are popular during the Easter (Ishtar/Astarte) feast in the spring, along with eggs, another symbol of fertility. I asked Jaden why he thought rabbits had a lot of offspring. He was not sure and apparently was not in a thinking mood. I told him that rabbits were prey to just about every predator there is--snakes, coyotes, foxes, hawks, owls, cats, etc. Since so many animals prey upon rabbits, they must bring forth a lot of offspring. But, does all that sex and fertility reap eternal rewards? Of course not. Rather, the very reason the rabbits have so many babies are for the sole purpose of DEATH. No promise of resurrection for those rabbits. Sex and more sex, birth and more birth, death and more death. Such is the earthly life cycle of the flesh, something not worthy of worshiping, in my opinion.
*June 9: We read Luke and some out of the children's book about praying, and I read the boys their story books of the day. Jade wrote his paragraph, and I read some to Jaden about the importance of water. During our walk we saw a dead shrew, and so I talked about maggot eggs, maggots, and the fly life cycle and their purpose (again, as I had this conversation with them several days prior about a tortoise or turtle that had been run over in the road). I then talked briefly about death recycling and the heathen/pagan belief in reincarnation. Indeed everything made from the earth--humans, animals, and plants--returns to the earth and then becomes a part of something else. Our flesh, in that way, does reincarnate. It's a continuous cycle, and in order to keep life sustained, death is required. Otherwise, we'd be overpopulated. The earth can only support so much life at a time. I reminded him, as I'd said the day previously when talking about the rabbits, earthly reincarnation is not worth worshiping, because our spirits are not reincarnated but are collected and kept in hibernation mode until it's decided that they should be resurrected in new bodies (for some spiritual bodies and some physical bodies, depending on the resurrection).
*June 10: We went to buy some groceries on this day, and we did our usual reading. I don't know what else we did. I don't recall.
*June 11: My mother came to visit us on this day, and we all went walking together. Trust fell and gashed his knee, so I returned home with him, upon his request. After I got him cleaned and bandaged, though, he wanted to go walking again, so we went to meet them, and Jade had found a tortoise and an adjustable strap...well, what was left of it with the adjustable part. Oh...I don't know what they're called. Anyway, someone else's junk became his treasure. It's enough strap for him to hold something on the back of his wagon or pedal car. The boys got to enjoy dewberries again. I actually looked up blackberries vs. dewberries when we got home. I'd been meaning to do that, so I could explain to Jaden the difference. My mother wondered, too. Nathan and I looked it up three or four years ago, but I'd forgotten what I'd read. I think dewberries are better! I guess they both have a common ancestor. Now there are a lot of varieties.
*June 12: The sabbath day! I talked to the boys about loving and caring for each other, wrote a blog post on my other blog, and I worked a little on the 7th commandment in God's Law of Love: The Perfect Law of Liberty.
Until next time....peace to you!
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