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Friday, October 21, 2011

Week 7: Colds and Exhaustion and Falling Behind

A woman I know always used to tell me "There is no cure for the common cold because the cold is the cure." So true.

I am convinced that we catch colds when our bodies are fed up with us for some reason. Usually that involves not having our proper sabbath rest. My family has been occupied every weekend lately--church events, traveling, something here, something there. I can't remember a weekend lately when there was just nothing on the calendar. This week we all ended up with colds, so this weekend we are calling everything off and recovering, resting, catching up on what it means to be us.

Because of the colds we fell just a tad short on things I would have liked to cover, but we still did a fair amount of work. We are covering week 7 of unit 1 of year three of Tapestry of Grace--Simon Bolivar and South America. It has been a fair week of study. I hope to dig in a bit deeper next week on the South America study.

Math has been great for Matty this week. He has really grasped the fractions concepts and is truly achieving mastery. Molly did addition of 8 and did pretty well, also. We still continue to work on skip counting with her, and she is now working on sixes.

I am working on remembering balance. I am currently reading Joel Salatin's book Folks, This Ain't Normal. I doubt that I will ever be a farmer and live completely off of my own land and eat food that I have put up in my larder for the winter. I don't especially have the desire to be that. Nevertheless, I am once again inspired to invest in my children the concept of work, responsibility, earning potential (at a young age), minimal screen time, respect for the land and possibly the idea of being the kind of person who does live off the land when I am older. I have this love-hate relationship with my computer, with facebook, with Netflix. The potential of all of these things for good is phenomenal, but it seems the majority of time spent is being wasted. I want to see something grow as a result of my own time and effort, but at the moment I feel like a consumer, raising consumers. How can I raise my kids in suburbia to be real and not tied to a device? It feels like The Matrix...

5 comments:

  1. Hey Kelly! Read your comment about This Ain't Normal on FB, then came here to read this post. Have you read The Omnivore's Dilemma? That's where I first encountered Polyface Farms (funny name, hm? It does seem as if they could have come up with something just a bit more poetic for such an extraordinary place!), and I tell ya, I was positively entranced! Why can't all farming be like that! That guy is a genius...I love how he uses his land and is so thoughtful about sustainability, etc. Anyway, just had to comment. You got me reading what's available of the book on Amazon's Look Inside Now option, and now I'm wanting to read the whole thing, but I've been buying WAY too many books lately. We're running out of shelf space! Hey, we need a phone date soon! I'll call you and if you can't talk then, we'll set something up.

    love you! Keri (Wright)

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  2. Hey Keri! LOVE the book. LOVE Joel. Can't wait to make a drive out there to see his farm here in the near future--maybe this weekend, even! Sell off a book or two to make room for this one. It is so worth it. Anyway, do call anytime. Home is better--I get crummy cell reception in the house.

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  3. OK, I'm so jealous that you're in driving distance! You'll have to write a nice, detailed blog post when you go...can't wait to hear about it!

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  4. Well, you know, it's just a good reason to come for a visit...The Sanders made the pilgrimage this summer and we had a blast.

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  5. Oh, and forgot to mention that Omnivore's Dilemma is next on my list to read...

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