Recap (2018.10.07)

In my spirit

• Winter dark is descending on Kansas – and on my soul. I started using my light in September, started my antidepressant the beginning of October. But the main battle-front remains in my mind – taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ. I am clinging to the one who shines in my heart:
  

  “For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
  ~2 Corinthians 4:6 (ESV)

In our family

• The little girls have reached the first of the “eat us out of house and home” stages (which I completely and nonsarcastically love). I fed them each a quarter slice of lasagna and gave Tirzah Mae and Louis each half a slice. The little girls ate their quarter. I served them seconds…and thirds…and fourths. And then they got the barely nibbled at halves from Tirzah Mae and Louis’s plates.
• It was with great sorrow that we said goodbye to our foster care worker, who left our agency for another one. The kids and I always looked forward to her monthly home visits – it’ll be interesting to see how things go with a new worker.
• Louis was the thrilled recipient of a toy dump truck. Mama and papa dithered way too long about what Grandma and Grandpa should get him as a birthday present, but he’s got it at last and is busy driving and dumping everywhere.
• I needed to measure Tirzah Mae’s height for her birthday present coming up here – which afforded a great opportunity to do some measuring activities with the kids. So we used tape to figure out how tall everyone was, then figured out how many MegaBlocks tall each person was, then figured out how many inches. It was tons of fun.

In our home

• My phone broke and it took a while to get a replacement, which meant I was discombobulated a good portion of the week. I use the phone for grocery pickup, for my grocery list, for taking pictures of the kids for these blog posts, for looking up recipes, for praying, for all sorts of things. I felt a little like I was flying blind without it.
• The older kids and I made applesauce with those apples. Despite my best intentions of making just one canner load (and thereby avoiding the “house falls apart while mama’s canning”), we ended up with 13 quarts. The internet lies when it says you’ll get one quart from every 3 pounds of apples. If you use whole apples without peeling and coring and put them through a food mill (as I do), you’ll end up with 13 quarts out of 30 lbs :-)

On the homestead

• We got a flat tire. One of our brand new tires was completely flat when I came out of my Tuesday Bible study. And my phone was broken, so I couldn’t just call Triple-A on my own. So I called my husband from the church office and he called them and they couldn’t make it for almost an hour and I was despairing because I had grocery pickup and the littlest had a family visit that I didn’t have a phone to reschedule or make alternate arrangements. And then we realized that, oh duh, we were at church and there were plenty of people that could change the tire. So one of the pastors and the church’s director of operations changed the tire. And then a friend came driving by and saw us and asked if she could help and handed me a pan of pasta casserole: “Here’s your dinner for tonight.” So we made it to grocery pickup and we made it home just in time to get the little girl’s diaper changed before her ride showed up and I didn’t have to cook. What a gracious God we serve!

In the library (currently reading)

• For Loving: Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home by Gloria Furman
  I made precisely no progress on this, mostly because I spent too much time reading Jane Austen
• For Growing: Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot
  These chapters are nice and short – perfect for while I’m doing 60 seconds of planks :-)
• For Knowing: The Importance of Being Little: What Young Children Really Need from Grown-ups by Erika Christakis
  I finished this one this week and am hoping to write up my thoughts on it soon. Despite its strong focus on preschool education, it generally supported my sense that preschoolers don’t need much by way of “schooling”. It has encouraged me to really focus on listening to and conversing with my children throughout the day (instead of listening with half an ear while really thinking about something else.)
• For Seeing: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  I finished this at the very beginning of the week and discovered, to my shock, that I haven’t recorded reading any Jane Austen since beginning my library reading challenge in 2006. I am almost certain this is the fault of my record-keeping, not of my reading, but it means that I certainly must remedy the situation.
• For Seeing: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  What could I do but quickly run down to my home library to see which Austen I would read next? I selected Sense and Sensibility and devoured it all over the course of this last rainy weekend.
• For Enjoying: These High Green Hills by Jan Karon
  I’ve had the third installment in the Mitford series out of the library for a little while now, but finally started it this week. So cozy and perfect for fall and winter reading.
• Picture books galore – fairy tales, books by the next authors in line, and books about spiders
  A garden spider spun her web across our patio door, and we’ve been watching her eagerly. We thought that it would only be fitting that we read Eric Carle’s The Very Busy Spider (and whatever else we could find about spiders) in her honor. (Side note: I’ve stuck my face in her web about a half dozen times over the past several weeks, and she’s always faithfully respun her web. Very busy spider indeed, fixing my blundering mistakes.)