Chef Jaden
Jaden William fixed breakfast for us every day this week, because he wanted to do so, except for the sixth day when we ate a quick fruit breakfast and got to work, and except for the Sabbath on which we always eat an easy breakfast. The first day he made pancakes, and I made muffins (I didn't want pancakes), and the other four days he made muffins. He decided one of the days to make peach muffins. Now I haven't made peach muffins in nearly seven years. I made them one time, and I'd used a different recipe than the base recipe I use now for all my various muffins. We had not liked them, and though I've thought a few times about trying peaches with my beloved muffin recipe, I've just never done it.
Jade came up with the idea totally on his own, though, and wow, did they turn out delicious (I did take out the cinnamon and told him we should include it just like in our apple cinnamon muffins). The very next day we all wanted peach muffins again, but the electricity was off, hence my grain mill would not function. However I have a manual mill, so William took out that grinder and went to work. I was working with Trusten on a workbook, and so when Jaden William the flour was coming out too coarse I didn't pay too close attention. From where I was sitting it looked ok, and so I told him to carry on. Well he got everything mixed together (and right afterward the electricity came back on), and I then saw what he meant. The mill can be adjusted, just as the electric one can be, and the thing had been set on a setting that basically just chopped the grain. There was no turning back, though. We ended up eating the muffins that way. It was a good lesson in how the flour normally soaks up the liquids in the correct way. Sorry. I took no pictures of any of this.
Jaden and Trusten did workbook math, nothing fun about math this week. I worked with Liv in the Southwestern book I have on Numbers.
Eye Collages
Trust and Liv used the window crayons I bought. Trusten designed one of the boys' bedroom windows, and Liv decorated the second. I mentioned this in my last post, but this particular activity took place during this week.
We all participated in a fun eye collage (my idea). I couldn't possibly get Elizabeth still enough for her picture to turn out well. I did finally get one with which I was satisfied, but I had to take it while nursing her, and so hers is more diagonal. Liv's, Jade's, and Nathan's turned out the best. In the second collage I used different pictures of Jade and myself where the colors of our eyes look quite different. This was fun, and I have the top collage set as my newest desktop background.
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| Top, from l to r: Liv, Trust, Na; Bottom: Jade, Liz, Tara |
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| Bottom left is alternate Jade, bottom right is alternate Tara |
One beautiful morning we headed to the post office to pick up a package. The skies were gorgeous, but we saw nothing out of the ordinary. Late that afternoon we started off to NWA (Northwest Arkansas) to get groceries. I was amazed to see a strange sight in the sky. We had recently read in one of Jaden's weekly readers about solar storms and how the solar flares could cause the aurora borealis to be seen as far south as Arkansas, so Jaden said that he thought it might be that. It didn't look like an aurora, though. It partially looked like a second sun shining, and then there was a red bow. The bow had a longer reach than you can really tell in my pictures, but the most visible part was with the bright circle of light, and you can see that in the pictures. You can see clearly where the sun (a few minutes shy of an hour before sunset) is, and there are only light cirrus-like clouds in the sky, not cumulus clouds covering that whole area with just a break for the sun to shine through. It literally looks like there is an entire different light-source (though it must surely not be). Does anyone know the correct explanation for this phenomenon? I do remember that the waves that show red show through better in the evenings, so this seems to me to be related to solar particles and waves, but I'm not sure whether it can be referred to as aurora, when I've never seen any aurora picture like this.
Homer
We read in Mystery of History about "Elisha," "Joel and Obadiah," and "Homer." I decided to read The Children's Homer with Jaden, which is a shortened version of the two classics The Odyssey and The Illiad. I loved the movies. Odysseus underwent many trials but never gave up in trying to get home to his wife and son. And his wife was noble and faithful for two decades, refusing to believe he'd died and not wishing to marry another. I'm also hoping to open Jaden's eyes wide to the biggest difference between the One True God and the many pagan gods, which is the fact that it's not that God the Father is a single god, but rather one, and that "one" means unity and union with harmony. God can reproduce and beget sons just as any man or animal or plant, but they are one with him (like is fully explained in Christ's prayer in John 17).
There are other gods. The scriptures call both angels and men gods. Satan is called the god of this world. And indeed there is a lot of truth seen in the pagan religions. The problem is that people have worshiped all the various gods, and they WAR against each other. There is NO unity/oneness. The gods warred with each other, took revenge upon each other, etc. One person may have prayed to one god or goddess for one thing, and delighting to answer that person's prayer, something horrible may have happened to that person when another god did something to him or her to get back at the other god or to answer one of his loyal follower's prayers.
I'm hoping for some good discussion and important lessons.
Speaking of important lessons, I'll share one of the latest Randolph stories. For those who don't recall, as I've not shared many Randolph stories on the blog, Randolph is the main character in the most regular bedtime stories I've told the children. I've been telling Randolph stories for five years or so now. They are fun but almost always have a moral lesson, too. This story was about two more of Randolph's sons named Shiloh and Abaddon. Randolph taught both those sons how to make fire. The two sons took the knowledge of making fire and went on two separate paths. Shiloh used his knowledge of making fire to light lamps for others so that they could see their way in the dark and to build fires for warmth. Abaddon was full of hate and so used his knowledge of making fire to deliberately burn down a nearby forest. (Not sure whether I shared it a while back, but there was another son of Randolph's--Pyro--who also caused destruction with burning, and he perished in a field fire of his own making.) Shiloh was loved and praised by those around him, whereas it was discovered what Abaddon did, and he was executed for his deed, and there was much mourning for the innocent that was lost, as well as mourning on Randolph's part that his son chose the wrong way.
This story was to further the understanding of the knowledge of good and evil and that knowledge itself is not evil but what is done with it can be. Jaden and I have returned to this topic a lot over the past few weeks. Two people can obtain the same basic knowledge, and one can use that knowledge to do evil, and another can use that same knowledge to do good. A person can make a knife to cut food or leather, etc. or can make a knife to kill in battle. A person can read a story to meditate upon its concepts and learn from the characters' successes and failures to become a better person, or a person can read the same story and decide to engage in wrongful activities learned in the story. A person can learn uterine surgery to undertake a life-saving cesarean section operation or to remove the baby to kill it.
I had already conceived the story right before the children went to bed, but when I went into the boys' bedroom Trusten was beating on the big stuffed horse in the middle of the room, kicking and punching it. I said, "I believe the story I'm about to tell will be just perfect, because Trusten is not doing the right thing toward the horse." Immediately he started dancing with the horse, holding onto its front feet. So after I told the story I revisited the incident with Trusten and the horse. Trusten had the knowledge to move his arms/hands and legs/feet, but he showed how that could be used for both good and evil toward the horse.
Geodes
We opened geodes this week, and of the six geodes, only one of them was not much to look at inside. I've now got them all adorning a shelf on one of our bookcases. We also read about geodes: what the word means (earth-like, shaped like the earth), how they form, what kinds of minerals can be found inside, where they're located, etc. The first five Jaden chiseled around them and then hammered. The last one we left for Nathan, and he cut it open neatly. Some of my pictures got deleted, and I'm disappointed in how some of these look, as they look so much more gorgeous than you can see, but the one Nathan is holding looks nice. The one busted open shown on the floor with just a tiny cap off the top is a very gorgeous one, too. You just can't tell it.
Icicles and Chickens
Jaden loves all the ice in the winter, as most of you reading well know. Here he is by the bluffs with an icicle.
And everyone who knows Jaden William also knows he dearly loves chickens. He has wanted some silkies again ever since his beloved black silkie Rudi died years ago. He went with his daddy to get some white and gray ones. The one pictured below became injured (leg was hurt by an attacking chicken), and Jaden cared for it all day.
Well, that covers the high points of our week.
Until next time...
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