Wrapping up the year

After the Easter break it is always hard to get back to the old schedule. Add in beautiful spring weather and baseball season and you have fidgety hobbits that are not at all interested in Latin declensions. So I've let that go for now and we are concentrating on finishing up a few loose ends like math books and spelling workbooks so we can start fresh next fall. Even Ocular Athletics has become stale. Luckily for me I bought a copy of Nancy Carpentier Browns study guide of The Blue Cross. Just the thing for a very enjoyable end to a very Chestertonian year!

Holy Week

We have been clicking along quite nicely with school and now can afford (meaning we will still finish that math book by mid-May) to take a couple of weeks off and concentrate on Easter. We have been cleaning to the point that I would have to follow the boys around with the vacuum to keep the place any cleaner. (Okay, the stove is still waiting ...) and today we are relaxing, me with the computer and the Hobbits with a game of Hero Scape.
Tomorrow we will be attending the Holy Thursday mass which will be said in memory of our very beloved priest who died three years ago on Holy Thursday. He is still greatly missed and I am sure we will need a large supply of kleenex to get through this. Cake and coffee afterwards and then Eucharistic adoration...
I haven't decided about Friday. Stations and liturgy are at noon with no service later that we could attend as a family. We have had Good Friday snow storms the last couple of years (snow is early this year and the nine inches we got yesterday should be gone by Friday)and we have done the stations here at home. I like this. We place cards of the stations around the dining room table with small candles set in front of them. The boys take turns reading the devotions and then blowing out the candle. The room is fairly dark by the end and we are subdued by the great sacrifice of our Lord. Hmmm...
On Saturday we will tidy up, decorate eggs and the house, bake bread and go to the Vigil Mass. It is ten years since we entered the Church as a family! The best ten years, ever!!
On Easter Sunday Grandma will come and we will celebrate with an Easter Egg hunt. (and a huge ham dinner!)Hopefully, out side.(not the dinner) It has been a few years since we have done that. Little Hobbit can't remember an outdoor hunt!

Spring Cleaning

We've been out of touch for a while due to a computer virus. And now, thanks to some absolutely beautiful Spring weather we have the cleaning bug...

Ocular Athletics

Math by Joe

Math is boring!!! I hate to start a report with so blunt a statement but it's true. For instance, why on earth would you need to know this: If there are four green marbles, three red marbles, and 6 yellow marbles in a sack what are the odds that you are going to pull out a red one? The question seems utterly pointless to me but our neighbor, Frank says that it would be helpful if you were a planter. Meanwhile, on the other side of the road (or world) I'm learning (or reading ) about percents, cubic measurement, decimals, and factions.

Music by Adam

Music, some say, is an irritable sound except if played so well it is flawless. I, on the other hand, prefer to hear the occasional mistake then the harmony lasting on and on with no brake until the player decides to end the song. It makes the player sound more human when the song has a mistake or two in it. I mean Beethoven was good but does get boring after a while. Wouldn't you say he was a little too good? I guess I say this because the only instrument I can play at all is the piano which still sounds like I am pounding with a hammer. But since I am not that at ease with the world right now I will leave this page here.

Poetry Monday

The hobbits copy poetry in notebooks on Mondays instead of their handwriting workbooks. They have developed a real love for poetry over the year and I thought I would participate by blogging a poem here on Mondays. Here is today's offering which doesn't have a title that I know of. I found it in Wisdom and Innocence by Joseph Pearce. It was written by G.K. Chesterton for one of his beloved neighbors.

Rejoice all nations under the sun;
Their bishops dance, their aged statesmen run,
Paint the world red and think it frightful fun
That Barbara, Barbara is Twenty-One.
But the Crier is crying
In Lyme of the King
Lost, Stolen or Strayed
Is the Marvelous Thing.
I will ring for the sea-gulls
That dance in the spray
But the girls that go dancing
Go dancing away,
The girls that go dancing
Go dancing
go dancing,
The girls that go dancing
Go dancing away.

A hobbit reading...

in his hobbit hole...

Ocular Athletics

Snow by Joe

Snow, as you know but I'm going to bore you to death telling you anyway, is a crystal of ice that fell from the sky. We have 263" of the stuff and rising. I don't like snow because I have a driveway 1/12 of a mile long and likes to be shoveled. But that builds muscles. It also is appetite inspiring. Every snowflake is about this * big. Pretty odd how that can add up to 263 inches.

By Adam

Have you ever seen a bird fly by the window while you were reading a book? Have you ever wished you were a happy-go-lucky bird flying through the air, the roar of the wind in your ears whipping your hair about like it was bound and determined to rip it from your scalp? If you have we are of one mind. If you haven't then this paper means nothing to you. Every night I lay under the heavy covers thinking about flying, wishing I could do it and for someone who has never ridden a plane the image is in my mind of ant sized houses sailing under me and is so real it feels like a memory. I can collapse into myself and imagine I'm a bird with soft feathers and spindly legs clutching a branch with needle sharp claws. The one thing that doesn't sound appealing is hitting an ice cold window at 20 miles an hour. But again my flood of thoughts have stalled, hit a window just like a bird so
hasta la vista.