Gloria in Excelsis Deo: {SQT} One Very Busy Week

1. Day Trip to Columbia

On Friday afternoon last, I took the whole crew to Columbia, SC, ninety minutes away for John to practice with fellow homeschoolers for the upcoming Catholic Quiz Bowl (teams of grades 5+). The whole group of middle-schoolers was so earnest and enthusiastic: it was a delight to see!

We met at the beautiful Richland Library, whose children section was something to be admired like I haven't seen before!

On that note, we already owned but are now nearly daily using Catholic Trivia (Traditional Version), which I highly recommend! Our nearly 8-year-old knows scant answers, so she is often our reader of questions (an honored position she enjoys!) while the 10- and 12-year-olds and parents pretend to hit buzzers and shout out questions. The kids are having us play it at meal times and in the car, and it is so fun! Meanwhile, everyone is learning all the answers they are hearing.

2. Piano Recital Saturday

The children participated in what was for them a particularly big piano recital at Steinway Gallery on Saturday. Our studio requires students to perform at recital any songs they will be competing with, so John and Mary got all their songs out of the way without having to also devote a Saturday in March to a recital. Click here to enjoy photos and a cumulative 20 minutes of listening among all four kids!

3. Great Back Yard Bird Count

The children enjoyed participating in the Great Back Yard Bird Count on three of the four days it was running. (Mama enjoyed having kids old enough that her participation consisted only of entering their bird count lists into the website at the end of it all!) The below picture captures their triumphant return from tromping through the woods and falling into rain puddles such that they all took off their boots and poured water out of them in front of me. Their clothing was soaked in mud-water, too!

4. One Very Busy Schedule

This week was one of an absolutely wild schedule, but I reflected that, whereas in the past, I would have been in despair about us having achieved so little school and that done in a shotgun pattern, this time I faced it with calm and knew it would be alright: the change is because of my scheduling us down to the half-hour this year.

Sunday Mass

This week, we faced three doctor's appointments (no illnesses, all check-ups), two meetings, one required volunteering event, the housecleaners coming in the middle of a school day, our whole family attending the mid-week Mass that John being assigned to serve . . . on top of our regular schedule of four and a half hours of music lessons, three sports classes, an online class, our art class, and John's CCE on two days. When I looked at our calendar, we were reduced to doing formal school under my supervision for exactly one morning, a few pockets here and there, plus the children had a few periods when they would be home with Dad or a babysitter in which to do unsupervised (read: way less effective) school.

Six children at the dentist's office

But I did not panic! Because I have been scheduling our time, I feel good right now that we've been having a good year and have been sticking to school. (Some homeschooling years are good, some years are rough: such is life.) My normal rule is to guard our morning hours against all appointments, no matter how much push back we get about "being flexible homeschoolers who surely can take the morning off." So, when a bunch of appointments did for once coincide and steal our mornings, I felt okay about that.

Also, I still scheduled all our time this week. I printed out each child's weekly blank calendar, filled it in with all our appointments (including marking down simply "Mama gone" for these three hours, so I knew the child could be assigned only independent work), and then I got to work filling in with only the most core material and what was due to any outside teachers. I even accounted for my stress level, knowing that, yes, I might be walking back in the door at 10:30 a.m., but that I'd have to deal with all the kerfuffle of my being gone, and my mind would be distracted and that I really needed to build in buffers of a half hour or an hour of no assignments around my entrances and egresses: my brain and emotional status can't handle that much without moving into sins of yelling!

Anyway, this week was a good example for my own self of what is working. (It was different than if we all woke up sick with a terrible illness, which calls for a different kind of survival plan.)

5. Brave Guys

Who could be worried with these two brave soldiers defending the hearth and home?

6. Lent Approaches

This past week in the traditional calendar was Septagesima Sunday, which means it is definitely time to start planning for Lent for ourselves and our families.

"The time of Septagesima is somewhat like a prelude to Lent, the traditional time for spiritual reform. That is why the liturgy presents us today with a program which we must put into effect in order to bring about within ourselves a new, serious conversion, so that we may rise again with Christ at Easter. . . . The first step toward conversion always consists in humbly recognizing that we need to be converted. The lukewarm must become fervent, the fervent must reach perfection, the perfect must attain heroic virtue. Who can say that he does not need to advance in virtue and in sanctity?" (Divine Intimacy, Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, 1964)

I appreciated Leila Lawler's post at Like Mother, Like Daughter entitled "Choosing Lenten Devotionals: Wisdom from Blessed Colomba Marmion." Read her article for a very helpful exposition of Bl. Colomba's advice:

"We see how important it is in this matter to distrust our own judgment, our own lights; how important it is not to base our holiness upon such or such a practice of devotion, however excellent, which we choose for ourselves, nor upon such or such an observance of our religious rule.

"Such an observance may be suspended by a higher law, as is, for example, the law of charity towards our neighbor. Holiness for us must be based before and above all upon the fulfillment of the divine law, the natural law, the precepts of the decalogue, the commandments of the Church, and the duties of our state.

"A piety that does not respect this hierarchy of duties ought to be held suspect: all ascetism that is not governed by the precepts and doctrine of the Gospel cannot come from the Holy Spirit who inspired the Gospel. “Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God,” says Saint Paul, “they are the sons of God.” "

Each member of our family (above the age of reason) uses this "LENT IS COMING" worksheet every year.