I'm porting over May 2024 social media posts to our family blog. If you're already "friends" with me on social media, you've probably seen all of this!
May 2024
Dogs on a Sunday morning
Today school consisted (solely) of the boys dissecting owl pellets while I drove everywhere on earth today, made phone calls, was helping teens prepare for finals and theater Tech Week, and grocery shopping. I absolutely adore how David (6) organized his animal bones into categories (“mom, write MYSTERY”).
Mary had the loveliest evening attending a Civil War ball this past week. The next one is a Western Formal! I simply love our homeschool community.
Tonight, our beautiful Mary performed in her final performance at the Preparatory Orchestra level before rising next year to YOC!
I’d like to recommend Riley’s delectable homemade fudge. She offers numerous flavors and it is packaged beautifully. I bought six flavors for my family and cut the fudge into dice-sized pieces to enjoy in a civilized fashion with hot tea and a good read-aloud. Now if I can just keep the stash of fudge hidden from said family, this will last us for three or four more afternoon family tea gatherings!
Last night, Margaret and I attended "Les Mis" by Eagles Eagles' Wings Studio and were incredibly impressed. Chris, Mary, and I get to attend again today, and, frankly, I wish I had bought tickets to the third performance, too!
I have loved "Les Mis" all my adult life, I have every song memorized, I have watched all the movies. Only after watching this production last night did I really come to understand more about the revolution plot line, which was one aspect that had previously not captured my interest. These actors were able to present it to me in a richer way after my having loved this musical for 25 years.
Facebook isn't the place for a long-enough review, but I just spent about an hour commenting through scene by scene to John. The casting, the costuming, the sets, the acting, specific nuances and choices, the singing . . . so many amazing moments. This is a theater group made up entirely or almost so of Christians, and it shows in how they do everything for the glory of God, and, in this specific musical, highlighting the mercy of God toward man.
I can’t wait to watch it again at today’s performance!
Thanks to my family for giving me such a special Mother’s Day! They feted me a day early—due to various scheduling conflicts—with a restaurant breakfast, flowers, gifts, and the most thoughtful cards.
* * *
Every ten days, I change Thomas’s continuous glucose monitor. I announce, “It’s Dexcom day!”
For the first time today, little brother David (6 years old) heard me and, next thing I knew, he had gathered up all the supplies and laid them out for me. It was the cutest thing.
* * *
I put in my butterfly garden about a month ago and today spotted my first butterfly friend! 😍
The three boys and I had a great time at Patterson Farm’s homeschool day this past Thursday!
* * *
"Eight Below" was a good family movie that all ages enjoyed, which is very rare to find. Beware that some of the sweet dogs die, so tender young hearts might find that difficult!
* * *
Our family was honored to attend the Fraternus Accolade ceremony on Monday evening. Joseph finished 5th grade and his first year with Fraternus, so he was given a rosary. John finished 11th grade and chose to complete the rigorous Knighthood program this year. Chris and I are so proud of him!
In the spirit of a confraternity, Fraternus Knights commit to the follow "rule of life."
Fraternus Knights Pray their Rosary Daily
Fraternus Knights Confess Their Sins and Attend Mass Regularly
Fraternus Knights Treasure the Sacred Scriptures
Fraternus Knights Mortify the Flesh and Offer Acts of Reparation
Fraternus Knights Live their Fraternity
Fraternus Knights Lead in their Vocations
I want to recommend Clear Play to any of my friends, whether you have minor kids or not. If you're not familiar with it, Clear Play is a filtering product to use with movies. It is now so convenient: We have Amazon Prime streaming, and we can rent the movie through Clear Play from our own Amazon account with just one click.
Even we adults enjoy using Clear Play to clean up movies to remove gross scenes or language that bother us. I've included some screen shots of the filtering selections. When we rent a movie, we can go ahead and accept all the filtering. Or we can go through and block or unblock specific scenes and words to our preferences. It is so strict that one can even block a scene of a person drinking a glass of wine at a restaurant (say, if you're a Mormon who is offended by that).
(Note: The one gap is if you have closed captioning turned on to hear/see the dialog better. If words are snipped from the audio, they will still show up in the closed captioning.)
We have cut almost all subscriptions from our budget, but having Clear Play at $7.99/month is well worth it to our family because we've gone from almost no Hollywood movies being acceptable to us as produced to a goodly percentage being watchable and enjoyable!
* * *
Our family was *so blessed* to spend the week on Hilton Head Island. What a respite! I was anxious about preparing for a vacation so close upon the heels of the school year ending, but the benefit was that after a crazy-busy May, relaxing for a whole week was healing. We actually showed up to John and Joseph's Fraternus Accolade ceremony packed and ready to go, and departed from church, arriving on the island at 1:00 a.m. Then we are returning only a few hours before we are due to attend the homeschool graduation ceremony of our friends.
We intentionally stayed close to the condo this week and did not drive around doing touristy activities. Our days were filled with drinking coffee on the porch, taking repeated daily walks on the beach, building sand castles, reading novels, swimming at the condo complex pool, and watching a few movies. Our condo looked across the channel toward Daufuskie Island, and our beach was chock full of animals: jelly fish, horseshoe crabs, tiny crabs, minuscule frogs, many birds, dolphins many times daily, sharks (!), deer, and even a puffer fish.
One evening, we attended the Gregg Russell concert, which turned out to be his very first night of the summer season! What old-fashioned fun! Thomas got called up on stage not once, but TWICE. This kid loves talking to adults and does not lack confidence.
We also rented bicycles one morning, the three teens going off on their own while Joseph (11) and I rode 9 miles around the island. Joseph kept telling me as we rode that "this is one of the best days of my life." MELT THIS MAMA'S HEART. The days are long, but the years are so short. Chris had charge of the two youngest boys and, purely by chance, arrived by car at Harbor Town when we arrived there by bicycle, so he took all the boys to the top of the lighthouse.
I have learned how to be a better homemaker of a large family on vacation, and it took me too many years. This time around, I planned all our meals--breakfast, lunch, dinner, and desserts--keeping them simple and easy. I brought up groceries for coffee and breakfast the first morning at the condo. In advance, I placed a grocery order for the week's food to pick up mid-morning of the first day. It was so much more relaxing to stay home and cook meals than to be hauling the family to restaurants constantly! We thank Pop-Pops for treating us to a restaurant outing for some authentic sea food: Thomas is now asking me to grill salmon for him!
Now we are ready to go home, start some summer school basics, get into some summer time exercise and sports (casual at home, not on teams), and go on a bunch of easy, inexpensive adventures around Charlotte in the next few months (like local baseball games and summer POPs concerts!).
.JPG)
Thanks for Frances L. for organizing this class on mycology led by Kenny Rupert of Fun Guy Foraging. I really had little interest in mushrooms, but it turned out to be incredibly interesting and I now know how much I don't know. Mr. Rupert got his degree in finance at UNC Charlotte, continued his finance studies at Oxford, England, and worked in the banking industry before falling in love with mushrooms, which he's been studying for the 20 years since.
After the class and nature walk, we all ate lunch and played at the playground.
Roses from my garden
Some dogs like to be on their backs or cradled like a baby, while some dogs do not. Tilly is definitely a dog who likes to chill out on her back. We wuv her.
