hard won wisdom

One day I am going to need to say something to one of my children. It will be something really important. They will be on the brink of making one of those very poor decisions in life that only bring disaster and take many unnecessary years to correct. There will come a time when I am really going to need to use my words and have them have their intended affect. Those words are going to have to not lack any potency. They cannot be allowed to be heaped upon a huge dusty pile of other words that the children were forced to listen to over the years. Going forward I will be very sparing with words lest they begin to loose their power. Given the choice between calling to someone from across the room and getting up out of my chair I will choose the later, even if I am tired. If I do have to give commands, I will give non verbal commands. If I do have to give verbal commands I will try to pare them down to one or two word directives before uttering them. If there is to be no parental verbal haze in the heads of these children it is my responsibility to shepherd through this world and into the next, I will have to hold my tongue about ninety percent of the time.

Ramping up

So far we have been consistent with the math and reading lessons trying to get ready for the new school year. Today I took my son's violin to the music shop and had them tune it. After dinner we did our first violin practice of the summer. He starts taking lessons again in September. Sophie and I sat down together and played Ode to Joy, Yankee Doodle, and Rockin Robin on the guitars.
I have been reading instructions on Logo because Sophie wants to learn more about computers.

07 28 08

Got Sophie to do a math lesson then a geography lesson. Got Helen to do a reading practice lesson and now she is doing some learning activities out of a pre-K book. I handed Rick a copy of Durand's Life of Greece and he has started reading that. Now we just need to do a Bible reading a little later before bed.

The New School Year

Ok here is the plan. School begins again in earnest in September. Sophie needs prep-work on math, Richard needs prep-work on writing, and Helen needs prep-work on reading. I have five weeks to work with them consistently and help them ramp up for the rigors of the new year.

July 4th weekend

We spent the 4th in Woodstock, Va with the in-laws. We had a nice time. We also got to see our good friends the Buedes. And we went to the movies to see the movie "Wall E" which was terrific. Also got to see fireworks!
Some more photos:

Thomas' baptism

Thomas was baptised on June 29. My sister Clare was the God mother.

more pics

Life

has been busy! We had our fifth child on May 29th at 6:38 am. His name is Thomas Alden and he weighed 8 pounds 15 ounces and was 20 1/4 inches long. He is a sweet baby. Here are some pics from the past few weeks. It has been crazy busy but worth it.

My hard work with Rick paying off

Richard playing at the W.Va Vandalia Festival on Saturday in the Youth Fiddle Contest(15 and under).

Waiting on Baby

Trying to stay busy till the baby gets here. Got up early and got Rick up with me this morning. We sat on the porch and had tea and talked about what makes plants grow back when you cut them and what makes squirrels think something is a nut...
Becca stayed in bead because the pregnancy is getting even more tiring so I just took Rick to church with me.
We got home and had a relaxing few hours and I got some reading in while the children did chores - very nice! Then Helen and I got in a reading lesson before we left again.
We all piled into the family van and went over to a park in Teays valley and met with all of Rick's fellow violin/fiddle students. There was a picnic then a jam session. Sophie got to participate a little with her guitar.
We stopped in the way home at the improvement store to buy stuff for the next house project. I got in a Bible reading with the children while Becca was inside picking out a paint color.
We put everybody to bed and then I have been painting the bedroom

Follow the Boy

Becca left the boys with me while she and the girls ran an errand after I got home from work. Jack wanted desperately to go wandering down the street in search of his mom. I allowed him to go down to the end of our street but made him turn around and come home because I could not leave Rick alone at home. So he was heartbroken and distraught from being made to turn around. Rick came to the rescue with a big sunny smile and a hand full of helicopter seeds from the neighbors' maple trees. We walked up and down the street in front of our house picking up handfuls of helicopter seeds and tossing them in the air and watching them spin slowly back to Earth.
Becca made it home and we all went for a family walk, allowing Jack to lead the way this time to go wherever he wanted, unhindered by interruptions from us. We wandered for a good long while, following his two-year-old whims at each intersection through the neighbor hood streets till we were all finally worn out and trudged back up the hill toward home.

Nothing Like Waiting Till The Last Minute!

Ooops - no entries at all this month. I am a slack blogger.
lessee... we are concluding the school year, Richard is getting ready to play at a fiddle contest later in May, Sophie is really getting into the guitar, I am still trying to get Helen to read, and Jack is talking more than he was a month ago. Rebecca is SICK of being pregnant. The doctors say the baby will be here June 8 or so. We started a bunch of garden seeds in bins in the attic and have been going up there every night to water them. Cub Scouts is finally done for the year (phew!). We are still waiting on the testing scores to come back to see how Rick and Sophie did...

A Good Day

I have been reading Lost Warships. It is a very brief survey of wartime marine archeology. It is one of those great coffee table books that draw you in and make you ignore everyone else in the room. I dunno, maybe it will help out down the road when we are trying to come up with a unit study project...

Went to a late mass this morning which was a nice break. Usually we go to 9am mass because the children have Sunday school afterwards. But there was none this week.

Today on the way to church I told the children that if they paid attention during the readings and were able to answer some questions I would quiz them on later, they would get a reward when we went to Stuff Mart. As a result, they sat riveted for the first, second, and third reading, and even for part of the homily. It was an amazing thing to witness. They did reasonably well on the questions. Now, I had already decided to budget in Sculpy clay for the girls and replacement darts for Richard's Nerf gun last night when we were planning our post-church trip to Stuff Mart, so I figured there was no harm if I piggy-backed the extra effort on their part in church to round out the day. I won't have to repeat this next week because we will be back to Sunday school. They will be quizzed anyway with no further effort required on my part...

On top of everything else we just got done with Greek, violin, and guitar. The girls spent an hour or so working on their Sculpy creations today and I fired the creations for them in the oven.

Biting My Nails

The two eldest left this morning with their mom to go take their exams. I hope we are not in for a nasty surprise...

Easter Sunday

Jack is finally willing to attend church with the rest of us. For about a year he was like Damian in the Omen whenever he caught sight of the spires and the stained glass windows. Now he is willing to go inside without pitching a fit. Once inside though he runs around like a mad man and pulls off his nice church clothes. I got to sit with the older kids today and his mom had to deal with him...

Got all the lessons in tonight on top of cleaning, cooking, and other chores. Fighting with Richard to hold his left wrist correctly when playing the violin. Nothing else is going to progress with his playing until he stops flattening out his wrist which only serves to flatten out all the notes... Sophie is doing much better than I expected so far with the guitar... long nimble fingers. Had to yell at Helen about putting more effort into reading. I worry that we have let her watch too much TV and her brain is turning to mush. I read to her extra long tonight and then she helped me bake muffins.

Tonight I saw my two eldest, on the cell phone, talking to another little girl who lives across town, working together earnestly to hash out the thornier technical aspects of some internet application that runs some on-line virtual-world game (Webkins, I think it is called). Now I have done similar things, but not until I was required to do something like this at work, and not until I was in my late twenties. It was just very odd to behold, these kids who are not even ten years old, doing almost the exact same thing. We are in a new and totally unexpected world.

Phonetic Spelling

Busy Monday

We visited their grandparents in Ellicott City. We have to go home to WV tomorrow. There are a lot of other people I wish we could have fit on on this trip to DC but we were just here for a few days

I am watching the children tonight while Rebecca goes to her sister's confirmation mass.

We got in another Greek lesson tonight, a reading lesson with Helen, practiced the violin, and had Sophie go through her guitar exercises. Their grandparents gave her a collection of Beatrix Potter stories, so the girls sat there at the dining table in Rebecca's parents' house doing drawings while I read Potter after Potter book to them till I became hoarse. They love Beatrix Potter.

Now they have a few minutes of quiet time before bed. I am going to relax now and read the Creighton novel my dad gave me.

Traveling

We are on the road, taking a long weekend. I brought along the instruments and the books. We were driving all yesterday and were completely exhausted.

Finally started getting stuff in today. We took the children to the Franciscan Monastery in DC. Becca and I went to confession then we all went on one of the guided tours of the main church and the replica of the catacombs. Then we came back to her parents house and chilled out for the rest of the day.

I got in two reading lessons with Helen (short ones), two Greek lessons with Rick, a guitar lesson and a violin lesson. Sophie also did some reading on her own out of a history book. I hope all of that begins to make up for the several hours the children have logged in front of the DVD player over the last two days.

Afternoon in Kanawha State Forest