Feast of Tabernacles and Eighth Day 2013

Week of Sept. 15 thru 21 and cont. thru 26:

First of all, I'd like to apologize to my email subscribers for the mistake in the last post.  I realized it only after publishing, and I've updated it. 

The days leading up to Tabernacles were busy, but we did some of our regular schooling.  The 15th of September, the first day of the week, was a day of cleaning and laundry, and I had Trust and Liv work on Explode the Code and preschool workbook pages, respectively.  I don't know what Jaden William did that day...there's no telling.  I imagine he probably did something with his daddy, but whatever it was, I didn't record it.

Second day of week was reading and math, as usual.

Third day of the week I had a doctor's appointment with an ENT.  Good news is that I don't have some tumor or something in my throat or ear or head, and I tested with "excellent" hearing, toward the top of the chart.  Bad news is that I guess I'll just have to live with the clogged/full feeling in my left ear, as I have the last two years, or maybe successfully get rid of it by getting a retainer to wear at night, because it's believed by both the doctor (who suffers the same issue herself) and me that it must be due to problems with my temporomandibular joint, and I grind and clench my teeth at night. 

Our regular reading and history on the fourth day of the week.  Then the night of the 18th was the beginning of the Christian holiday, the Feast of Tabernacles (or Tents or Booths), and the first day is a sabbath, meaning no servile work.  We had our traditional hot dog and marshmallow roast.

Mmmmm....that's what I call a good "hot dog."  No ketchup on mine.  I don't like sweeties on my hot dog.  But this picture is making my mouth literally water.  LOL!  Organic beef hot dog and whole wheat bun with mustard, mayonaisse, pickle relish (I prefer dill over sweet), and one of my recently newfound loves, sauerkraut.  Mmmmm....doggie!  Ha-ha.

It was too cold most of the nights during the week of Tabernacles to sleep in tents outside, and it also stormed one night.  But there were two nights during which we did sleep outside.  The first night we did we stayed very cold, despite the fire and warm clothes with our blankets.  The second night wasn't as bad.  We did not camp this first night.

We enjoyed the next day, mostly outside.  It was sooooo wonderful outside. Not too hot, but it was sunny and beautiful.  We sometimes even listen to a sermon outside (with iPad), though we listened inside on this day.  I made an experimental Mexican cheese dip and included ground beef.  Oh, it was good!  I poured it on chips in bowls for everyone, and we enjoyed!  A friend of ours, Dave, came over for a bit, and he ate with us.

The kids had fun riding in their dump trucks down our hill road, and the boys took turns pulling the girls in their wagon:

I took a video and tried to post.  I do not wish to wait for it to load again.  You can see Trusten to the left of the picture, and Liv is toward the base of the hill road, at the woods line.  They sometimes pick up quite a speed and roll a good ways across the yard.

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The second day of Tabernacles was preparation day for the weekly Sabbath.  I stayed very busy on that day, because I also blogged in addition to my cleaning and cooking, and I fixed an extra big feast.  I also needed to bake a big pumpkin so that I could make pumpkin pie for dessert, and I also put back three additional bags of pumpkin pulp for later pies. 

I wasn't able to find a good turkey anywhere, so I baked chicken.  I baked cornbread to make dressing and then baked that.  I made baked macaroni and cheese, boiled and mashed potatoes, and I also served green beans, turkey gravy, and cranberry sauce with whole cranberries.

 Everything but the cranberry sauce, which I almost forgot to take out of the refrigerator for us to eat!

Delicious homemade pumpkin pie

This night of the Sabbath was the first night we camped out, in two tents, toward the back of our property, up the hill.  Brrrrr….

We then enjoyed a nice Sabbath day, eating delicious leftovers for lunch.  We listened to a sermon, and I read to the kids about Tabernacles.

The fourth day of Tabernacles we enjoyed a family day.  We went to visit the Botanical Gardens of the Ozarks near Fayetteville, AR after a breakfast of peach and cinnamon muffins.

This last picture is of the boys running barefoot across the grass in the center.  Ahhhhh....  I saw a sign that said, "Please Run in the Grass."  WELL...you don't need to tell ME twice!  I took off my sandals and took off!  It was luxurious!!!  No rocks, nothing pokey.  All the kids loved it, too.  I even took Happy out of her stroller and let her walk barefoot in the grass.  Nathan declined.  That's too bad.  It was soooo nice.  My feet felt refreshed for a great deal afterward.  The flowers, butterflies, and bees were all very nice to me, but running through that grass and wiggling my toes through it was truly the highlight of my day.

After we left, we then ate in Rogers at a brick oven pizza restaurant that we'd not tried, yet, since it's fairly new.  It was good.  Then we went next door to the bowling alley and played a game.

 

Math Day:

The fifth day of Tabernacles, on the second day of the week, Nathan worked, and the kids and I went to get groceries.  Since it was normally our "math day," I weaved in the topics of "numbers" with "temporary" and "tabernacles" and "eternity" and "infinity."  I compared the meaning of TABERNACLES and NUMBERS with the meaning of the coming holiday of EIGHTH DAY and ETERNITY, even talking about how a sideways 8 is the symbol for INFINITY.  I used "bread" as an example, asking the children whether they thought there was any number of loaves of bread that they could be given that would last them, for food, for the rest of their lives.  They agreed that there was no bread they knew of that would last that long, but even if they were given a fresh loaf every day for the rest of their lives, there is still a limit to the number of their days and the number of loaves of bread.  That's like tabernacles, I explained to them.  But, the 8th Day symbolizes eternity, and directly following the temporary existence on this earth with the limited number of days and loaves of bread is eternity on a new earth, where there is NO limit.  And the "bread of life" will not ever run out. 

When we got home from town, I took a picture of Jade with one of the new chicks.  The other picture was taken another day, I think on the weekly Sabbath.  Yeah.  Most of them hatched out two days before that, on the first day of Tabernacles.  Yeah, all the chicks we've had have always hatched on either the weekly Sabbath or an annual holy day (except for the two of these, maybe, that hatched the following day).  There were seven in all.  There was a runt, and something has happened to it since, but the other six are doing well.  All but one are Little Hen's chicks, but she sat on all the eggs, so the one is her adopted chick.

We watched a family Christian movie this night called Lukewarm.


Art and Music Day:

Time to listen to one of the kids' favorite songs, "Dreaming of the Kingdom," on Youtube.  I also gave the kids God's Kingdom-themed coloring sheets to color.

William's on left, Trusten's upper right, and Olivia's lower right.  Olivia was very excited when she handed me hers and pointed to all the colorful streaks in the "air."  She said they were fireworks!  Yeah, you can tell I need to work more with them on coloring.  That's something I've never been into doing much, and Trusten doesn't like it, I don't think, either.  He was content to hurry up and finish his.  His picture brings to mind "God Loves the Children" song...."...red, yellow, black and white," except there are purple children in his picture instead of "white."  LOL  That one child is a mix of red and purple.  

This was the second night we camped out.

The boys and Olivia slept in a tent together, and Elizabeth slept with Nathan and me.  The girls hung out for awhile in the tent with me, while I read and watched the boys around the fire. 

History and Geography Day:

My plan had been to talk about biblical history regarding the Feast of Tabernacles, both how it was kept under the old covenant and how it was kept early in the new covenant and how it's kept now, still under the new covenant.  BUT, I was very depressed on this day.  I let the kids play outside a lot, and I tried to keep my depression at bay by reading a lot in one of my books that I was reading.  I recently finished another Christian historical fiction trilogy, set in the first century A.D. in the Roman Empire.  This was the second set of books I've read set in that time period, in that genre.  I loved the Mark of the Lion trilogy by Francine Rivers, that I read two summers ago.  This time I read Debra Diaz's Woman of Sin trilogy (Woman of Sin, then Man of God, then Child of the King).  Another excellent story, with the exception of a few problems with doctrine that are mentioned here and there, like the wrong Sabbath day and a trinity god and coming fully equipped with eternal life so that you either live in heaven or burn (somehow) in hell for eternity.  Oh, and the not understanding things about God "not what's important."  Thankfully, these details only cropped up here and there, just once or twice each, and did not affect the overall story.   I downloaded the books to my iPad and iPhone with my Kindle app, and two of them were free, and one of them was $2.99.  What a fantastic deal! They're all showing up for the latter price now, so I guess I must have bought them during a special or something.  The entire trilogy is available for $4.99. 

Anyway….I know the kids enjoyed all their free time that they got. This was the last great day of Tabernacles.  It's a shame I was down, but it could have been worse.

Eighth Day:  The 8th Day holiday was better than the previous day, but I was still somewhat depressed.  Nathan was home this day, but he was in a bad mood (for which he profusely apologized later).  I failed to make up for it, so I was pretty guilty myself.  I listened to a sermon (without inviting him, which was the wrong thing to do), and I do not remember at all what was said.  I don't think I listened much to it, really.  I love to meditate deeply on the 8th Day, and I did enjoy some of that outside.  Some parts of the day were good.  I think the kids had a good day overall.  Nathan grilled hamburgers, and I cut up potatoes for french fries, and I also fried onion rings.  I believe the Enemy was working very hard against me or against us during these last days of the fall holiday season.  But his kingdom failed overall, because ultimately, good things have come about.  And it's all good, anyway, to remind me of how bad things won't happen in God's Eternal Kingdom.  

I also wanted to do a "science" theme on this day, since it was our regular science day.  I'd wanted to take a family walk, but in my state of mind, I didn't go through with my plans.  I thought it would be neat for the kids to collect nature things of their choosing and then do a craft, gluing everything on individual sheets of construction paper to form the numeral "8." BUT, the bright side of this is that I STILL can do this soon with the kids.  There's nothing stopping me.

It's been three years since I've attended services during the feasts, and this year we didn't keep the feasts with any other believers, and I suffered in part because of this.  I've also decided to go back to the United Church of God nearby.  There wasn't much I opposed when we went before (unlike in some of the other congregations), and I know the things that I did won't bother me so much now, and I realize perhaps I could even be a valuable person there to change those specific things.  It never occurred to me before.  Jaden William is also excited.  He, Elizabeth, and I will start attending this upcoming Sabbath, and Nathan will decide later whether he wants to attend.  I will not take Trusten and Olivia without him.

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I've got one more post to do before I'm caught up.  The kids and I took a much-delayed trip to visit family and friends.  We waited for months, hoping Nathan would get to go, too, but I finally decided to just take the kids and go.  So, I'll post pictures of our visit.  This week I'm getting caught up not only on blogging, but also on things around the house and finalizing preparations for a baby shower I'll be hosting in early November, as well as preparing for at least one CLEP test.  I'll be soon signing up for college classes for next spring.  Nathan has signed up for some for the second eight weeks of this semester.  He'll be starting soon. 

Until next time...

Seven Day Cycles vs. 8th Day Eternity, Brainstorming and Charting, Eyes, and Staghorn Sumac

Seven-Day Time Cycle vs. "8th Day" Eternity

Note: Confusion later arose from the following post, brought to my attention by one reader.  I was asked why I do art only day a week (which is mostly true for art), but just because I labeled the days "science day" or "art day" doesn't mean we don't learn anything scientific on the other days of the week or do not do any spelling, grammar, or math workbook work.  Quite the contrary.  This is explained more in my following post.

So the poster project I earlier spoke of for the Feast of Tabernacles that we did not do right before or during Feast of Tabernacles, but rather afterward, was basically a project getting us back on track with a better schedule...for everything.  Last year, especially, so much fell apart.  Plus, there have been some new ways I've wanted to try things.  I wanted to take the seven-day week and talk about it with the children and then also talk about the 8th Day (which is a feast of God that immediately follows the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles) that symbolizes eternity, which is when--or should I rather say where--there is no time.  Time comes from the same etymological root as the word temporary.  The seven day cycle just continues on and on, and Jaden talks often with Nathan and me about how quickly the days and weeks go by, so this was a good lesson.

I also do not like to use names the Romans gave to the days of the week which are names of Roman and Nordic pagan gods.  I still sometimes say those names to people outside the Body of Christ, but I'm very conscious of it.  It doesn't seem right to me to say "Sunday" (Sun's day or day of the sun) or "Monday" (Moon's day or day of the moon), etc.  It seems rather silly, if nothing else.  When I speak to the children or to a dear brother or sister of the household of God, I typically say, "First day, second day, etc." and "Sabbath" for the seventh day, which is the only day of the week that the Eternal God sanctified and made holy.

Now you may have heard those in the Christianity religion trying to justify keeping "Sunday," the first day of the week, as the weekly holy day by saying it's the "8th day" and commemorates Christ's resurrection (which God never tells us to commemorate, anyway).

But we can't keep the 8th day as a weekly cycle.  We are living in a death cycle in a temporary body.  When people observe Easter (a feast that bears the name of pagan fertility goddess) and participate in their sunrise service, they are taking part in worshiping an ongoing temporary cycle of creation.

The only "8th day" we should be keeping is the annual Eighth Day feast that the Eternal has commanded us to keep which foreshadows the conclusion of the true plan of salvation and eternity.

So in this way I taught a spiritual lesson while also reinforcing the fact that we are given six days to do our work, and the seventh day is the holy Sabbath day.  On the posterboard I named the days of week by number and assigned those days certain tasks, not just for learning (the picture shows a limited part of the whole), but for everything in our lives, including the day we get groceries, for example. Before making a chart for this, though, we used the one side of the poster board for brainstorming using a web, and this was their introduction to this.  I used pencil, so it doesn't show up too well, but I wanted to use something we could easily erase and change, if need be.  "Lifestyle of Learning" is the center hub.

There's much more to our 7-day chart, and even for our learning, there are certain things we do every day, like reading.  But for main concentrations, we focus on:

Day 1: Survival skills, learning as a family day
Day 2: Math day
Day 3: Art, music, and poetry day
Day 4: History and geography day
Day 5: Science, health, and environment day
Day 6: Sabbath prep, extra reading and make-up day
Day 7: Sabbath--rest, extra bible study and prayer, family time

Then at the bottom in a space smaller than the other seven days (nice how that worked out perfectly like that; it was meant to be), I put an "8" and wrote that it doesn't exist in this world and that it's symbolic of eternity.  I like how on the Sabbath day we can focus MORE on thinking about that now-non-existent day of the week, because it DOESN'T come the following day (but rather the first day of a new week), but we can MEDITATE on what 8th Day is truly coming, which is eternity when the Empire of God will have Kingdom headquarters on the new earth, and the Family of God will reign over the entire universe.  We can MEDITATE on how good things will be when we no longer are living in this temporary world/age where the days fly by, and so many things are left undone, and so many things don't work out the way we want, and there is so much war and affliction, and, and, and...We can REST and MEDITATE and PRAY so that we can walk out our lives each day of the next temporary seven-day week cycle FOCUSED on the end goal, on entering the Kingdom of God that is foreshadowed by that little slot at the bottom of our posterboard with the "8" label.

So last week, the week of the Roman month of November 18-24, 2012:

Math day:

We had fun with the Inchimals. We worked out some addition problems in the book, and the kids decided to measure everyone's heights. 

Liv getting measured by Inchimals

Art, Music, and Poetry Day:

We started reading Look Again, a Childcraft book about art.  Jaden also attended his third of four sessions of art class.  This fall he took "Drawing Landscapes."  He has not enjoyed it as much as his previous two classes ("Birdhouses in Clay" and "Mosaics") and has decided he cannot draw well (neither can I), but he did like going and did learn some things.

History and Geography Day:

Jaden did some testing and pretesting in Mystery of History.  We read about Samson, the Israelite judge in the same book. We also resumed where we'd left off in A Street Through Time.  Over the previous weeks we watched several documentaries that covered the eras that we'd already covered in that book.  I did not keep a list written down, so I won't be posting it here.  

Science, Health, and Environment Day:

We read about eyes in The Human Body science book from the God's Design... series. Then we read in Nature Got There First about how the eye inspired the invention of cameras and how there are different types of vision/eyes/cameras.  Finally we read the October issue of Ranger Rick magazine, including a feature on animal eyes.  We also read in the latter about various types of seeds and how they travel to reproduce.  We then went outside and collected a few of the different types.

"The Eye" from The Human Body and "Eye to Camera" from Nature Got There First

How eye position affects animals (Ranger Rick, October 2012 issue)

Eye size and eye protection

"Oddball Eyes"  and "Know Your Pupils" from Ranger Rick (October 2012)

Top: "Seeds Get Around" from Ranger Rick magazine (October 2012 issue); Bottom: Seeds we collected from our yard and labeled

 
 Sabbath:

We read from the bible, listened and sang to hymns, and the children's devotional was on the subject of being special and how each is important to God.  This was perfect, because I really have suspected some struggling from my children with feeling like their siblings are more important, feeling left out, etc.  It's ironic how they can all feel that way about each other.  I think this lesson really helped.

During a short family drive I had Nathan stop so I could hop out and collect some gorgeous berries from the shrub/small tree pictured below.  I've identified the tree as Staghorn Suman (Rhus typhina).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhus_typhina:

Some beekeepers use dried sumac bobs as a source of fuel for their smokers.
The fruit of sumacs can be collected, soaked and washed in cold water, strained, sweetened and made into a pink lemonade. This should not be done with the related plant, poison sumac. The leaves and berries of staghorn sumac have been mixed with tobacco and other herbs and smoked by Native American tribes. This practice continues to a small degree to this day.

All parts of the staghorn sumac, except the roots, can be used as both a natural dye and as a mordant. The plant is rich in tannins and can be added to other dye baths to improve light fastness. Harvest the leaves in the summer and the bark all year round. 

Staghorn Sumac

Some other pictures from the week:

A few of the books we got from Nathan's momma and stepdad when they came to visit us

To this graph, Jaden exclaimed that the kids were foolish, that the environment (the issue with the fewest votes of what they thought was most important) should have been the MOST important, and I was SO PROUD of him and praised him greatly. I SO very much agree.  What difference do all the other issues make if we can no longer even live here to work on the other issues?!

Jade's newly acquired pistol bb gun (a gift from his "Papaw Ken"), about its workings he explained to me in great detail

 Until next time...